Syndicate
by Alas Poor Yorcake
Summary: AU, Criminal Minds, In a universe, probably not far from our own, there exist two governments in every nation: a Natural Government, in which the officials strive to build and sustain a successful nation, and a Criminal government, in which the officials strive to destroy and revolt in order to bring down the Natural Government. Full summary inside. T, Gen, slightly Reid-centric.
1. Chapter 1: Aaron Hotchner

**A/N: Hey, I'm back! And not with a new chapter on anything I'm supposed to be writing! I wrote something else, instead. I recently got into the Criminal Minds fandom once again, so here I am. This is probably going to be my only non-oneshot fic in this fandom, though. ("But wait, that implies that you're already writing a oneshot fic for this fandom - !" you exclaim.)(("Yes, yes it does," I nod my head sagely.)) Anyway, here's the full length summary, because I write too much in a summary and not enough in a chapter:**

 **Summary: Criminal Minds AU, In a universe, probably not far from our own, there exist two governments in every nation: a Natural Government, in which the officials strive to build and sustain a successful nation, and a Criminal government, in which the officials strive to destroy and revolt in order to bring down the Natural Government. In one universe, the BAU team we know and love experienced stressors far before they ever had a chance of a normal life. Now, they work in an organization spiritfully called The Syndicate, in the business of catching criminals and profiling them in the process, so they can teach them how to become better criminals, and then set them loose on the Natural Government's world. These are their exploits, following the guidelines of the series in a twisted alternate universe. No slash, Gen, a but Reid-centric, but who doesn't love our favorite genius?**

 **Enjoy, and R &R!**

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The business had not started with one Aaron Hotchner, but his presence had helped the business flourish magnificently over time. Working as a prosecutor with part-time consultations at the BAU, he had not a wide dearth of finances, and was quite accustomed to the wealth his occupation raked in. He lived not in a mansion, but rather only an extravagant house in a mediocre neighborhood, harboring a single child of a meager nine days old and a wife not hesitant to express her distaste when her husband takes home his "lawyer lottery" only to put a majority of the money into security for their humble abode.

Haley Hotchner had been a defiant and untamable woman in her young age, and had seemed to digress from this persona when she traded it out for domesticity with a husband and, now, a newborn boy; not to say that none of her youthful spark remained, as Aaron sure could perceive it in her eyes whenever they began to argue. Haley had been the only person in Aaron's life who had been able to argue with him and come out on top, recognizing his primitive instinct to protect underneath the harsh words. Finding this to be an endearing quality, however much hidden, it had been her main reason for accepting the proposal of Aaron, who later claimed that it was a desperate attempt to keep her from being lured away. The risk was ultimately a majority, and so he had acted as quickly as possible.

Even now, his odd urge to protect has not been extinguished in the slightest, and had it been, it would have been rekindled by the birth of their boy. Jack Hotchner held a name of previous dispute, though now it felt much too permanent, carved into the polished granite face of a headstone.

January 2, 2004, at 7:34 p.m., the headlights of Aaron Hotchner's black Nissan shone straight towards the open front door at the head of the driveway, leading the prosecutor to pause and for his mind to race of all of the possibilities. Cases of killers he had worked to put away flitted through his mind, as well as the process, the Modus Operandi, of said murderers: bullet wound, stab wound, exsanguination, dismemberment, dissection, even _vivisection_ … and then the possibilities stemming from cases he had consulted on with the Bureau: rapists, bombers, long distance serial killers, team killings, killings driven by a fantasy or delusion, often times even _sexual_ in nature. Images tore through his head, bearing possibilities that Aaron knew could not be true, could never be true …

The truth was expressed horridly and in full value, spread across the walls and carpet, taking form in the blood soaking the house and the limbs of people that once were his family strewn about each room. But mostly, the truth was expressed in the message dabbed on the kitchen floor in his family's blood. The torsos and heads of both wife and child were severed, lying face down below the note and the heads presented bloody and cut above said note. In between the last remnants of what he had been so adamant to protect, was a simple message, perhaps to taunt him, perhaps to offer him some sort of twisted invitation, but either way, Aaron had not noticed the motive behind it, only the words.

" **Who will protect** _ **you**_ **, now?"**

After that, Aaron found himself roaming the streets, staying away from police stations and cars, and any kind of authoritative figure. He found them too imposing on what little remnants of control he had left, found them all too judgemental for him and his situation. He spent a mere two weeks on the streets, buying food and staying in hotels for one night with cash that he had been able to pocket when clarity to his mind returned and the shock receded.

There were … people, that visited him during this time, but at that time, the entire world had been a blur of unreality with vague outlines that paralleled the faint delineation in Aaron's mind between sanity and insanity; Aaron had not recognized nor acknowledged these people, and he suspected at that time that perhaps they weren't real, and were mere mirages his mind supplied to him, in a feeble attempt to rescue him from the fog of shock that had settled over him. Once the fog receded, he noted that no one had come to visit him, and swiftly concluded that the mirages were, in fact, that; mirages, images of his mind. He felt a strange numb feeling, and wondered if his lack of reaction to that conclusion was because he didn't feel anything, or if he didn't know what he was feeling. He found it didn't really matter, and set out for rebuilding his life.

He got a stable job, preferring to create one instead of work under an authority, a profession that would offer him a steady amount of income and keep him relatively sane. He began to work as a grief counselor, a specialist, using his protective instincts and projecting them onto other people, victims of crimes and the likes. Thankfully, these instincts allowed him to easily comfort and help his clients, who tended to leave him with good words and thankful advice. He was the man recommended to friends and family, and eventually even by official workers like nurses and doctors, getting enough money to buy his own office.

Roughly three months into the job, his client list had began to dwindle to the singular digits, and more had been leaving as well; it seemed he was rather a bit too good at his job; an unfortunate circumstance, as he had become almost an addict at that time, needing someone to protect and look over at all times. But, without clients to extend his reach of protection to, he remained unable to get his fix. He tried his own methods that he suggested to clients, he almost hired a therapist (though he thought better of it with his admittedly low finances, at the moment), and was even driven to seek out random strangers to impose his protective impulses on _something_.

His first kill was roughly seven months after the murder of his family. (Later, he would wonder just how he managed to keep himself under control, as his stressor had obviously been the death of his family, and he should have started killing much sooner than seven months.) It hadn't been a difficult target, a slender man quite lacking in physical strength, but that hadn't been Aaron's main primary focus.

Mr. Darren, as was his name, held close to himself a very sweet and innocent girl, whom he loved very much, and who loved him back just as vigorously. It hadn't been difficult to gather the needed supplies beforehand without obstacles, nor had it been difficult to infiltrate the man's apartment. It was, however, quite hard to kill him swiftly and quickly, with a butcher's knife to the neck; his head came off with surprising difficulty, as the knife had gotten stuck in the bone of the man's spine, but Aaron later concluded that more force and a sharper blade would certainly do the job. Once he had separated the head, he had placed it in a general trash bag, then proceeded to hack the limbs to pieces and place those in another bag. Blood had gone everywhere, and Aaron, knowing how killers and criminals get caught, being a prosecutor, made sure to clean up nicely afterward. The apartment coveted a hardwood floor, so a mop found in a nearby cabinet was the only tool necessary for cleanup; after he used it, he dipped it in water to clean the blood from it, then dipped it again in one of the trash bags, sucking up an adequate amount of blood to write, " **Protect"** on the floor. Other than the displaced (and recently cleaned) mop in the apartment, it was the only thing that was out of the ordinary.

When he had gotten back to his office, it had not been difficult to dispose of the body parts. Lye was relatively easy to make, and a few hours time to dissolve the flesh of the limbs certainly would not be taking money out of his pocket. All that remained after the destruction of the flesh was a few brittle bones. Following his instincts, Aaron picked out the remains and took a hammer to them, crushing them up into dust. He then bottled the powdered bone up, placing it under a floorboard he had screwed loose the night before.

His plan had not seemed flawed in the slightest. A few days after the police had covered the scene and cleaned it up, the girlfriend had soon been recommended to him for grief counseling. Add those meetings to the ones made by her friends and family and Mr. Darren's family, it would equal a satisfied compulsion. Aaron had gotten his fix, and the girlfriend had walked away a few months later, rejuvenated and ready to begin her life again. Nothing had seemed to go wrong. But he had sworn to never kill again. And he kept true to his promise, until he had another shortage of clients.

His next kill was a parent in a full family household, the male figure, once more. It was more likely, he calculated, for the woman in the family to have more outward empathy for the rest of the family, allowing them to go to counseling. He never once consciously considered that perhaps he would not be able to murder a wife or child, as violently as he had had his own stolen from him.

And so he crept out in the middle of the night with his tools, and decapitated and dismembered the man in his sleep, making sure to clean up afterwards, except for the bolded " **Protect"** he left in bloody letters in the master bedroom. The rewards were limitless, the whole rest of the family coming to him for help, and even whole other concerned families showed at his doorstep, asking for counseling. Each person, each mind, each soul, was another opportunity to feed his compulsion to protect, so each he invited inside with open arms.

But, he found, after the healing of the family he had broken, that it all simply wasn't enough. He swallowed his doubts and crept out three weeks after his last kill. He ventured out to the same house, and this time took the life of one of the children. He had packed the limbs and flesh without remorse, and was about to leave once more.

He couldn't … If he did, the police would most certainly know it was him, if not catch him. But he had to. From a profiler point of view, he could see clearly that this was to be his signature, and this was as much of his compulsion as protecting others was. He did it with his gloves this time, smearing the blood onto the carpet to fix the word into the flooring for the second time in that same house. " **Protect."**

He had done it flawlessly, and the family had come for his help, for his protection, once again. Even a few official workers had showed up at his door, law enforcement officers and court-workers, looking to get over what they had seen. One of his old friends, an outspoken lawyer he worked beside called David Hershaw, even came a-ringing, and Aaron, though most surprised, accepted him as a client on the spot.

And so it went, that whenever Aaron's client list thinned, he would go out for a kill, writing " **Protect"** on the floor of his victim's home. Knowing of profilers and their jurisdiction laws, he never killed out-of-state, and never killed anyone that had come from or had any relations out-of-state. He also kept in mind that he had to temper himself, to control himself. He could never let his killing escalate, or he would be put on a priority list for the BAU.

There came a time, when he could not find an adequate target to kill when his shortage of clients came. So he turned to the closest thing to a friend he had at the time. David's house was remarkably clean, and fortunately unlocked, despite the man's past fears that his house would be broken into (after all, he reasoned, so was Aaron's, and he basically deadbolted his house to keep intruders out). His bedroom was only relatively clean, holding many items, probably for sentimental purposes. Aaron reprimanded himself for veering off topic, and moved closer to his friend, on one side of the bed. His wife, Karen Hershaw, remained sleeping and silent.

Unfortunately, the floorboard beneath Aaron's feet did not remain silent, but emanated a loud squeak as Aaron leaned on it, attempting to loom over his friend to get a good angle for a clean slice. David's eyes shot open instantly, and, upon catching sight of the blade, contracted with fear. He did not, however, cry out, nor did he make any attempt to wake his wife. He simply blinked up at Aaron, who, surprising himself, found himself more intrigued than frightened and consequently relaxed, exhaling a deep breath that had held all of the adrenaline and anticipation riding through his blood. David swallowed for a moment, his eyes' focus flickering from the knife in Aaron's hand and his face, though he didn't seem courageous to initiate eye contact. He slowly raised his hands closer to his head in a surrendering position, and whispered softly, "Perhaps we could take this elsewhere? I have a fully stocked kitchen, and I'm sure it would make much less of a mess there."

His curiosity overpowering the voice in his head telling him to _kill him, now, protect protect,_ he nodded simply with a small half-smile, and gestured for David to lead the way into the kitchen.

"I don't want my wife to wake up and see me gone, with a large splatter of blood beside her," David explained shortly, starting his coffee maker. His voice did not waver, to his credibility, but Aaron reckoned that most of his current control came from his years as a defense attorney. "I'd rather she see the blood when she's prepared herself for the worst, you know? Would you like some? I can guarantee it's much better than the coffee at the office." He gestured toward the coffee maker, while maneuvering his way over to the cabinet to get mugs. Aaron shook his head in a silent negative response, beginning to peer around the kitchen as David continued.

"It's really kinda rude to barge into my house like this, expect to kill me in my sleep, and then don't even accept a beverage from me," he huffed, but said no more on the subject after that. A few minutes later, when the coffee had finished brewing, he beckoned Aaron into the living room and took a seat for himself, cradling his coffee in his hands and blowing absentmindedly on it. Aaron slowly levered himself into the chair opposite, knowing he was in complete control of the situation, but the paranoia that grew when doing this type of job rebelled completely against that notion.

"You see, I had a suspicion, when I first saw you," David began, presumably to explain why his demeanor was so calm. "After all, you had simply disappeared when Haley and Jack had been killed. There was something … different about you, since then. I hadn't realized until a few days ago that it meant that you had turned into a psychotic killer."

"Psychopathic. Not psychotic. There's a difference," Aaron input, almost as surprised as David at the usual arguing words spewed from his lips, though he kept his expression stonily blank. It wasn't difficult; he had had a lot of practice, after all.

" … Right. Psychopathic. Anyway, the only reason I found out about you is because I wanted witness accounts for this killer that had written words in blood on his victim's floors. I wasn't actually looking for you - I was looking for your family's killer. But I found you instead, by simple luck. I just happened to be reminded of you in the moment that this cop told me of a couple of recent crimes alike to that. After that, the pieces just fell into place.

"But that's not my point. My point is, I know I'm going to die tonight. I am nowhere near happy nor okay with that fact, but I hold a resigned knowing that it has to come to pass. I just have one favor to ask of you, Aaron." He looked up at Aaron with a piercing gaze, one that Aaron, in all of his experience as a prosecutor, could not suppress the urge to blink first at. "The same killer that killed your family? Killed Karen's family as well. He also killed Judge Rodwell's family - remember him? I am resigned to my death, Aaron. But please, if you have any sentiment for me at all left, do me this favor.

"Gut the son of a bitch for me, will you?"

A few moments of silence filled the room after this vehement statement, but soon after Aaron found his place to remedy that. He gave a stern nod, and stood, indicating for David to do the same.

"I appreciate the concern that you have for all of those families, David, I really do. But it does not hinder my will to satisfy my own needs first, before going after that man. You _will_ die tonight, David, and you won't be my last. Because like it or not, I will always put my own health before that bastard's. And only when I am satisfied with my own care, will I seek him out. I must be at my best.

"That being said, your death is a requirement for making myself my best. And, not only that, but I recognize that I must cut all ties that I currently hold, burn all bridges, if I am to make it to the top. And so I apologize, David. I am truly, sincerely sorry." He stepped forward with his knife, putting a hand on David's shoulder and swinging back for leverage. He began his swing, barely noticing when David gave a sad smile and input, "I know. That's why I called the cops about five minutes ago."

Aaron only realized the gravity of David's words as the head hit the floor, the body following suit not long after. Instantly, the ex-prosecutor began to panic, looking around wildly with mind racing and heart fluttering. He took a deep breath, and convinced himself to calm down, and finish up what he had started.

He managed to finish cutting David up into bits and packing him into the trash bags, but by the time he had concluded doing that, he could see flashing lights and hear sirens outside. He swallowed several times to wet his dry throat, and took a chance, jumping out of the window of which he came inside, bolting to the nearest alleyway and hiding in it. He was only so lucky that David owned a house right on the edge of the city.

When he got to his office, he sat slowly down in his chair, his elbows on the desk and his hands running through his hair frantically. He had not finished, he had not had the time to finish, there wasn't enough time, he couldn't write the word, couldn't finish, couldn't finish, couldn't finish - !

He slammed his head down on the desk at the same time as his hands, and suddenly realized the presence of blood on them. Right. He had to clean up. He paused for a moment, thinking he could hear, just at the edge of his hearing, a small mantra without a recognizable voice to it … _protect, protect, protect …_

Swallowing the fear that was presently sending shivers up his spine and causing the hairs on his neck to stand up, he attempted to ignore the voice, spending the rest of the night cleaning himself up and disposing of the remains, crushing up the bones and placing them in a bottle under the same floorboard - which now held at least a dozen other labelled bottles - with a lack of efficiency that left him with wandering thoughts of every possibility of him getting caught. He did not sleep that night, or the next morning. His mind was fixed, was centered and focused on only one thing, so much that he almost couldn't function. _Protect, protect, protect, protect, protect - !_

But it was okay, it was alright, he had done everything else perfectly. His plan had not been flawed, and he had not executed it too terribly. He would not get caught. And yet, through the night and as the sun climbed over his windowsill, the whispers grew from weak mutterings to frenzied mumbles and then to the panicked yet constant whistle of a whine, almost alike to a keening noise coming from a wounded dog that he wished he could have slowly become accustomed to, as if it were static background noise. Instead, it took his attention and stole his concentration for the entirety of the day.

Because of this, with his already absent mind preoccupied, he was completely unable to fathom how the two men that had broken into his office on his lunch break could have discovered his … illicit activities. When he had entered, they had been sitting patiently in his two client chairs, talking in hushed voices. Once Aaron entered the room, they both ceased the conversation and stood, one of them stepping forward to extend a hand in greeting.

The man that stepped forward was caucasian and relatively tall, only an inch or two shorter than Aaron. He seemed to have been done in by gravity quite a bit, many wrinkles aging his face, though his hair was not silver yet, a mere blackish brown. His hairline had already begun to recede, however, so he must have been at least a bit the age he looked. He wore a small smile that almost seemed mocking, though the effect was rather done out by his large, hazel eyes, which in turn lead one to look at his face and instantly think of a stuffed Teddy Bear.

The other man was also caucasian, though he had a more distinctive complexion of a man who preferred the outdoors more; Aaron could cleanly see his tan line just under his shirt collar. His face was less aged than the previous man's, though Aaron doubted the reason was because he was younger. He moved more raggedly, and with harder movements, slower, as if to prevent the elongation of pain that came from sharp movements; perhaps pains in his joints and bones, that would surely come from old age? His face sparked no memory in Aaron's mind, yet it left a heavy impression, as most clients with a resolute purpose did. Aaron also could assume, from this comparison, that this man also was more of an individual worker than one who preferred to work with others.

Aaron took the first man's hand, taking note of the firm grip and the resolute shake, as well as his words of, "Jason Gideon, nice to meet you." His voice was low and vibrative to the ears, but his name was far more interesting than his voice.

Instantly, Aaron's memory flashed back to his days with Haley, before they had had Jack, when he had picked up a newspaper and gaped at the printed lettering. Jason Gideon was said to be the main man behind the Boston Incident, with the bombing and subsequent deaths of six FBI agents and a hostage.

The other man slid forward, extending his hand as well, and introducing himself. "Max Ryan. I assume the pleasantries aren't strictly necessary? We _are_ on a bit of a schedule." His name rang with no recognition in Aaron's mind, perhaps partially because he was already shocked into stillness at the other man in his office.

Aaron mentally shook off the shock, and nodded as he returned to his side of his desk, not introducing himself; he felt he didn't have the need to, and by the lack of surprise or offense on either parties' faces, they didn't expect him to. Or, perhaps it was just another pleasantry they thought to be unnecessary. "I assume you know who I am, and I would love to know how, but I think a much better question at the moment would be _why?_ "

Jason seemed to be the unspoken reserved spokesperson for the both of them at the moment. He shrugged while taking his seat again, and said, "Just came to say that we really admire your work."

Aaron did not blink, seating himself down in his chair as he maintained eye contact and leaned slightly forward, placing his hands out in front of him and donning a dominant persona to see the other men's reaction. "That would be incredibly kind of you, but I prefer to hear the truth, if you don't mind."

Max narrowed his eyes for a moment, but otherwise didn't react physically. Aaron dropped the persona, leaning back casually in his seat. "Not at all," Max replied. "You see, Jason here, a couple of other people, and I are all working on putting together an … er, _organization_ , would be the proper term."

Aaron narrowed his eyebrows, tilting his head upward and creasing his mouth into a thin line, the equivalent to a man looking at another person through the bottom of his bifocals; it was a less perceivable way to articulate dominance and control, in the simplified sense that the offender looked down upon the recipient of said look. Keeping this in mind, Aaron, still plagued with the _protect protect protect_ mantra but less so, as if it had been a frequency tuned down on an amplifier, attempted to pay acute attention to the subtle reactions to this action as he replied coolly, "Organization?"

"A group of criminals with the intent on helping other criminals," Jason clarified, and Aaron turned his attention to him; he didn't seem that affected by Aaron's intentional show of dominance, though that didn't give him any indication of Jason's current knowledge of such subtleties. "We help them, they help us. It's a chance to help people like us, with disorders and compulsions." He gave a lopsided smile that Aaron found himself peering intently at, to gauge its sincerity.

Aaron tilted his head to the right, taking a moment to digest the information Jason had both said and shown. He pursed his lips in thought, then spoke, "And you want me. Why?"

Jason answer was abrupt and immediate, with no ounce of hesitation. "We need a leader. Someone to keep all of us together, keep us running smoothly. And from what we've seen over the past few weeks, we feel that you would be a perfect fit."

Aaron contemplated this for a few moments, taking short note of the man's tendency to gesticulate while speaking, and briefly running possibilities through his mind how they could have been watching him for weeks at a time. Out loud, he asked, "And why, pray tell, would I join? The risk here seems to far outweigh the benefits."

Max smiled, a slightly hostile, if not feral, expression. "Because if you do this for us," he said, leaning forward, "not only will we help you finish what you started a few days ago, but we'll also help you to track down the man that murdered your family."

Instantly, Aaron established eye contact, searching left and right for any traces of a lie. He did not find any, but it didn't ease his doubt. Instead, his attention fixated on the last part of his sentence.

"Monster," he corrected, and both Max and Jason looked at him enquiringly. "The person that killed my family was not a man. It was a monstrosity."

Max's smile widened, this time expressing clearly hostility that Aaron somehow knew was not meant to disrespect, nor offend. "You mean to say you are not?"

Jason seemed to panic for a moment, a flicker in his eyes alike to a man desperate for help from even his enemies as he clinged to the edge of a cliff. Apparently attempting to reconcile some semblance of a polite conversation, he began, "Most of the people that we've already gathered for this organization have agreed that we need a leader, and there's no doubt that we do. We've burned all of our contacts searching for one, and currently, you're our last hope." He sighed, a light exhale, dropping his eyes to his shuffling hands. "We're desperate."

Aaron paused for one more moment, then stated, "I'll do it. On one condition," he added, watching the two men with their rapt attention on him. "Once I find Haley and Jack's murderer, all ties are cut. I won't hear from you, I won't see you, I won't think of you at all, ever. Do we have a deal?"

Max and Jason glanced at each other, both with smiles creasing their faces as they turned back and stood, the former offering a hand that Aaron took. "I believe we do."

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 **A/N: So ... that's Hotch done. Next is Morgan, then Gideon. Oh, and, uh, forgot to put this at the top, but I don't own Criminal Minds, to my great frustration.**

 **Reviews are much appreciated, and I'll try and get to work on my other stories in the meantime. R &R, I'll see you guys later, hopefully.**

 **~IsomorphicTARDIS**


	2. Chapter 2: Derek Morgan

**A/N: Alright, second chapter! This one is Derek, and longer than Hotch's, I believe ... hm. That's weird. I like Hotch more than Morgan. Whatever. Enjoy, y'all!**

 **R &R!**

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Derek Morgan had been one of the main factors in completing the team in the organization. He had grown up in Chicago, Illinois, in a rather rough part of town, with a police officer as a father. Living down in a sub-average apartment for most of his childhood, he spent most of his time outside, finding and hiding in various crooks and nicks in between buildings and the such. Football had always been his favorite sport, idolizing it as a child and growing up knowing what he was going to do.

He had never thought of police-work as a job, as something to grow up to do; rather, he saw it as a work of art, something to grow up to be, molding yourself and the community around you not with restrictions, but with opportunities. He hadn't been but ten years old when his father was gunned down by another who had chosen to waste those opportunities.

He hadn't felt his father's death, per se, hadn't had to swipe dribbles of blood from his face, but he had had to clear the image of waterfalls and dark pools of the murky liquid, infiltrating both his dreams and his waking reality. His sporadically colorful imagination from such a young age did not spare him despite the event that should have surely spurred on his Coming of Age. He dreamt of life and death, and the fine line that held a heavy balance between, and in life he aspired to be someone to walk that line, and to traverse over both sides.

After his father's death, he decided to screw pleasantries and begin walking that line himself. He joined up with a few other teenagers and took his life into his own hands, getting arrested multiple times in the process. Ignoring his instincts, he pressed himself to listen and believe his friends, who told him with prideful confidence that getting arrested meant he was doing everything right, just to not get caught next time. He listened, and tried to believe, right up to the day when he met Carl Buford.

He met Carl when he was eleven, immediately begging his mama to allow him to pursue an apprenticeship from the man, as the youth center coordinator had promised him wings to fly with over the boundaries of reality, by mode of football. And, upon becoming Carl's apprentice, Derek had learned how to expertly bend and shape the realities he held control over in his imagination - for Carl always held control of the one reality that mattered the most. Derek learned fast that he was only to survive was by way of keeping control over his other realities: imaginative stories and people that made sense in his head, that eventually morphed into secrets that he would hold, giving them up to any woman who would listen.

But for right then, he would keep them straight in his head and do the one thing he knew he did best; play football. He was the best, a bit of a teacher's pet because of it, and everyone knew it; but rather than expressing jealousy, the other teammates would try harder and harder to beat him, while at the same time encouraging him to do his best, so they could really train themselves. Derek didn't feel like a step-ladder for his teammates, and to them he wasn't an idol to look up to, but rather an obstacle that they would eventually overcome. Derek knew, then, that his team was his family. An extended, competitive, disjointed, all-types-of-backgrounds type of family that tackled him to the ground and kept his face in the dirt until he stopped struggling, when he could feign submission, only to kick the offending family member in the sweet spot and clamber upwards to make a dash for the football.

It was only when he thought he was reaping the rewards for becoming a part of his family and sparking some semblance of pride in his mentor, that Carl showed him exactly _how_ much control he had over Derek's realities. Derek had simply thought his mentor's motives for taking him under his wing were to raise a boy to the highest pedestal, to have someone to be prideful of; he knew, that day, that Carl's true ulterior were something much darker. He taught Derek how to fly above the realities and pick one to descend upon; that way, it was easier for him to withstand what he was putting Derek through.

He came back from the Cabin - capitalized, for it was a dreaded place that deserved an unfortunate amount of significance - with more scarring on his mind than had ever been on his body in all of his eleven years of being alive. He vowed that night, after emptying the contents of his stomach on the side of the road, that he would ask his mama if he could get as far away from Carl as was humanly possible; only, a singular, simple flaw presented itself as soon as his mama stepped through the doorway. She came in with groceries shackling her wrists and a football wedged between her delicate fingers. Said it was from the monstrosity himself, along with the lofty compliment of, "I'm so proud that we've found someone who can put your good talents to use and you've worked hard to train with him; just imagine where you're gonna go, Derek. Oh, just imagine … "

Derek learned that night that he couldn't tell anybody. No one was to know; not only because of the embarrassment, or because of Carl Buford's high social ranking, but also because he knew he needed Carl, at least until he could get his scholarship and get out of there.

He needed to make his mama proud, and work as hard as he could to go to a college that would help him to pay off everything his mama ever did for him. And if that meant playing along with the sick, twisted soul that used to be his mentor, then so be it. But by God, he would make sure that his life counted, when he left.

He lost his faith in God a little while later, and any ounce respect he ever had for the police force in his town was eradicated. He only held his trust and his respect for his mama, and kept it all throughout his life.

That's why, when he heard that Carl was beginning to go rough on her, to accuse her for things she didn't do, _couldn't_ have done? He simply relied on his trust and respect, and chose another reality to visit. When he came back with blood on his hands and a body at his feet, he was neither surprised nor repentant, and he wasted no time in disposing of the body and immediately looking for another football coach for the neighborhood.

For a while, he became the coach, and his fake words and testimony to the police about how he adored his mentor and was so very grievanced by his loss … it all kept him from becoming a suspect, no matter the power or evidence that the police had on him.

It wasn't a while later that he heard that the old boys that used to congratulate him on getting arrested, his past so-called- _friends_ were now hovering over his sister, breathing down her neck and _soliciting her into -_

The cops had no leads on who had left every single member of the frequenting gang all lying dead in an alley that was as dank and dirty as the gang itself; but then again, they hadn't seemed too eager to find the culprit. And for this, Derek was grateful. It was his first group kill, and it was much messier than he liked; had the police department done their job, perhaps he could have been caught.

But either way, there formed a small hole in his stomach that tore at his insides, a small abyss he came to know as doubt. And so he researched and researched and researched, bloody serial killers and their victims, mass killings, war footage, things that filled the abyss temporarily and fixed him, making him feel as young and innocent as he had in the beginning, before everything. Before Carl Buford and the gang. Before his father had died in front of his eyes. He could reassure himself … he was keeping others' innocence safe, by killing. He was doing the right thing. And if he be damned for it, so be it. His bull-headedness had gotten him this far, he wasn't going back.

Now … he had graduated high school and bolted out of there, pushing away the guilt that gnawed at his conscience at leaving his family there, and went to college. The resentment that he held for Carl Buford flushed and flourished into a raging fire, until it hardened into a solid lead ball, the emotions and rage coagulating into the pure form of hate and spite. He directed it at his faith, occasionally; it gave him a rushing feeling of satisfaction, piercing through his chest and striking close to his heart, settling in his lungs and hindering his breathing, and sending a lump to his throat. He felt like he was drowning, drowning in his supposed faith, in rage and hate, in Carl Buford, in pure air, in life.

He almost took his life that night. Almost. His roommate - another football player on the team - had come in just in time. But it was then that Derek found the cure. Art - his own form, in which he could impose his thoughts and feelings from every reality he still held onto with white knuckled grips. He would build, small things at first, like miniature models of things; then, he expanded his craft, and became a repair-man for the dorms - and a good one, at that. If you needed anything fixed, barring a computer or the likes, Derek Morgan was the one to find, for he could fix anything put in front of him. Granted, he may take it apart and add his own little twist to it, but that was the way of an artist.

He didn't stop researching his violent memorabilia, nor did he stop killing; but he made sure to not do it on campus, and at hours of the night where no one would be around. He only ever killed gangs and the scum on the streets, people no one had anymore, people all alone in the world, and willing to make the rest of humanity pay for it. He would seek out groups of three, three victims to be laid down and picked off of the streets. In his mind, he figured he was following in his father's footsteps - just with a far more violent, satisfying, and overall more effective way.

It was then, his senior year at the college, when he realized his specialty. Bombs - the ultimate art form, with a pure blend of sweet, sweet artistry, and the sour tang of killing. They became a part of his killing signature; kill each victim in ways he felt was proper, punishments that fit the crime, then, when at last they lay dying and pleading for their filthy lives, he would create a fiery swirl of an explosion from a store-bought bomb, one whose ringlets he compared to Vincent Van Gogh's "Starry Night". He came to the realization that he had a compulsion surrounding ringlets of fire, when he was reciting everything he did one day, after a swift kill, and the urge to murder had worn off. He began to carve swirls and ringlets and curlicues on everything he made, just enjoying the engraving and it's calligraphic beauty.

He began to build his first bomb, taking his time and making it last for the rest of his senior year, and finalized and planted it the day of his graduation. A simple bomb, without any flair or personal touch, set on a simple timer in the floor of the auditorium, where the FBI recruits were gathered for a seminar inviting them into the criminal-catching world. Twenty-seven people died that day, and Derek knew he would have a plethora of more victims before he was finished; all he had to do was practice and refine his own style of art - style of bomb.

He continued his education from there, with a plan set in mind; there had been faint rumors around that there was a criminal syndicate, the most intricate ever seen or heard of, that was offering to take new recruits. And Derek would make himself an offer they couldn't refuse.

But for now, he offered training for others and exercised his own love for killing and making art between days of his vacation. Once the new school year rolled around, he would apply for a position, and he was confident he would get in; he already knew some of the people there.

"Three, four, one _\- ah -_ down." Derek was panting by the time he was able to straighten back up from his bent position, chuckling softly down at the agent on the ground in front of him. He offered the woman a hand, which she took with a grateful smile, wisping a strand of hair from her face when she straightened as well.

"Not too bad, but make sure to keep your stomach blocked; if you're open, that's one of the first places an unsub will aim for," he coached, and the agent nodded, swiftly twirling around and walking off with a sway of her hips. Eyes lingering at the back of the agent's sweatpants for just a moment too improper, Morgan smiled openly and turned back to the rest of his self-defense class.

Okay, so maybe the training he offered was an FBI course, but all it meant was that he had connections inside the FBI he would be able to use. And to Derek, the risk was definitely worth the rewards, rendering him invaluable to the organization. Plus, it gave him credit to say that he completed FBI training, and could even teach it.

"Alright, that's enough for one day. Go ahead and get some rest; next meeting we're going to start on the more difficult stuff," he called, and the group began to disperse, many sending him smiles that promised luxury later; he grinned back, winking at a few he thought he may even have a chance with. Once they all left, Derek leaned over to take his water bottle from the ground, and wrapped his towel around his shoulders. Spotting Jason Gideon by the exit door, he headed closer to the man.

They had started contact not too long ago, Derek reaching out first, for some tips on evasion from law enforcement. The main motive was to start to get in good spirits with the head of the organization, but also because Derek's criminal record stretched back too far to recount, representing just how many times he's committed crimes and gotten caught; some help could go a long way. Jason had been recommended to him by a friend, and didn't disappoint at all at first contact; though, they had only made contact twice before, the first to establish a partnership, the second to establish trust. Yet, even now, Derek didn't especially trust him, and he suspected the sentiment was mutual.

He supposed the lack of trust was partially because of Derek's flat refusal to take part in Jason's organization as a client. The rumor spreading around held a solid basis: that Jason Gideon's organization was effective - more effective than any other, present or preceding - but that it came with a catch; your entire life had to be analyzed and took apart, essentially defeating any resemblance of privacy in your life, so that they could profile you, and teach you how to work against the odds and the profile. That part was true; but the rumor also mentioned explicitly about how they kept all of the information that they get from you in manilla folders, and are occasionally seen feeding this info to Federal organizations, to aid the law-abiders in catching criminals that the organization deemed unworthy, or just plain irritating. That, of course, was only rumor.

Of course, Derek knew this rumor almost too well - he was the one that started it, after hearing what he was to do in order to receive tips from the organization. Perhaps the organization nurtured a bit of resentment from this action, but Derek thought that was probably logical enough; to be completely honest, he wouldn't have cared if the organization resented him, if Jason hadn't been someone to be on good terms with - and Derek was sure that Jason respected him at least a little for being able to spread a rumor so fast with almost no trail backwards. Above all, Jason was the one to be friends with; he held an iron fist over almost the entire organization, so if he wanted Derek in, it was a guarantee that he had a job.

Derek was snapped from his thoughts by Jason's rumbling voice as he drew near. "I've got a job. You want in?"

Slightly surprised, Derek took a sip from his water bottle and shrugged. "I don't see why not. Somewhere up my alley?"

Jason hummed, holding the door open for Derek, who gave an absentminded thanks on his way through. "Bomber I met a few days ago, asking advice."

"Well, people don't just meet you for your looks," Derek pointed out as he began the trek to his car, "What's so special about this guy?"

Jason stopped walking, causing Derek to as well, and look back at him. The older man reached into his jacket and pulled out a manilla folder, curled into a cylinder with a rubber band, and handed it to Derek, who slid the band off and opened the folder, reading as Jason responded.

"Not only is his signature meticulously planned and executed, and extremely deadly at that, but he seems … easily driven by his compulsions. I want to help him. Help him plan this out better, make sure he isn't caught by his ignorance."

Derek blinked, nodding in understanding and flipping a page over, but he was unable to help a small, almost condescending, "I don't doubt your motives, Jason. Never have."

Derek glanced upward momentarily just to catch Jason nodding sagely, spreading his hands with palms upward and clasping them back together in what Derek categorized as a 'well, what are you gonna do?' gesture. Not that Derek spends extenuous amounts of time categorizing Jason's nonverbal communication cues.

Perhaps just a little. The man was a bit enigmatic, about as much as his words were; Derek found no embarrassment in making sure he knew what the man was conveying. Especially if it was linked to his motives. Derek assumed that Jason probably had some problems with ignorance himself, back when he was younger, and that was why he had a fixation on this bomber and others like him.

But, either way, bombs and obsessive behaviors were straight up Derek's alley - strike that, were his alley. Both of those were leading factors in his compulsions; therefore he could understand why Jason would call for him here.

"Alright, I'll help out. What do you want me to do?" he enquired without looking up from the folder, beginning to walk again, as Jason did as well.

The bomber Jason was going after wasn't much of an expert, but was definitely not lacking in eloquence; instantly, his respect for the man heightened, and Derek began to rub subconscious ringlets on the paper with his thumb. He felt a bit disappointed at the abundance of information on the man; though the cops hadn't gotten his name nor anywhere close to catching him, the organization was especially good at digging. The only way you could hide anything was to not have it anywhere but in your mind. It was part of the reason he resented the organization, but he knew it was just a matter of his nerves. Finishing up his reading and rolling the folder back up to put in his own bag, he tuned back into what Jason was telling him.

"I may need you during the confrontation. All I ask of you now is to keep your cell phone on you at all times, just in case the time arises," Jason directed, and Morgan nodded once more.

"'Course. I have to get to one of my sources at the Police Station; I heard there was a new serial killer in town, and I wanted to check him out. Wanna come?" he offered, not really expecting an affirmative from the other man, partially because he was not much of a social creature, and partially because he knew his mind would be wrapped around this bomber. Even Derek couldn't shake the man's art out of his mind, now.

And an affirmative was not what he received. "Ah, perhaps another day. I've got to get some of the profile ready on this bomber." There was no mistaking the pointed stress on the last sentence, which Derek found more amusing than irritating. Didn't he know already that Derek loved meeting others alike to him, and didn't have to pressure him into offering his assistance?

Derek smirked. "See you later then, Jason. Good luck."

Jason nodded. "And you."

Jason's call came at roughly two in the afternoon, while Derek was making his usual rounds on the outskirts of the city, prowling the perimeter for a target location. The ringing lasted for a few moments, until Derek could maneuver the device from his pocket to his ear while keeping in time with the flow of traffic.

"Morgan," he began, peering at the caller ID for a moment, then spoke when he received no answer. " … Jason? Hey, you there? What's up?" He prepared himself to pull over, concerned at the unusual silence from the other line, when he finally heard Jason's voice. But instead of the usual low rumble of a growl, his voice was higher pitched, disheveled.

"Derek, you … you said there was a new, a new serial killer in town." It seemed to be directed as a question, but it held the inflection of a statement, further spiking Derek's worry; Jason, as scrambled as his thoughts may be and as difficult to interpret at times, could always fully think out what he was going to say, how he was going to say it, moments before he did; he never once spoke with a stutter or had to reiterate what he said. He was a master at predicting others' thought processes and moves, as if all interactions with him were like a chess game, and his words were his pieces. Derek was always glad he was never on the wrong side of the man's games.

Derek narrowed his eyes. "Yeah, I never got the chance to meet him. Why?"

"I found him."

Derek hit the brakes with a harsh kick, sending the car howling into a tailspin on the side of the road. At first glance, Derek hadn't thought much of the killer, perhaps just someone he could help out, for he was gaining a lot of attention in the station, if Derek's sources were at all credible. His kills varied in Modus Operandi, sometimes clean and efficient, sometimes messy and doused with overkill. He didn't seem to have a defined signature, as nothing seemed to be constant in any of his killings or victimology, except that whoever he set his sights on ended up dead in the long run. He was more dangerous than any killer he had seen, which was perhaps a factor in Derek's lack of ability to find him: not only was the killer good, Derek wasn't exactly sure he would want to meet someone with that much of a lack of empathy, meaning his subconscious could have made him cut his losses sooner than usual; which was an impressive feat, as Derek prided himself greatly on his tenacity.

Jason continued, oblivious to Derek's shock, and more conscious of his own. "You … get over here. Quickly."

Derek attempted to pull himself from whatever sort of shock he had delved into, bringing himself back onto the road with his car with just as much instability as his next words held. "Yeah, sure, where are you?"

"I'm over by … by the warehouse on 16th. Get here, now." A faint scream was heard in the background, and Derek, knowing that it wouldn't be wise to ask for an answer to any questions to what was happening, instead snapped an assurance of an arrival into his mobile before hanging up and throwing the phone into the passengers seat. He floored the pedal to the car's carpet and drove well past the speed limit, moving one hand across the top of his head.

"I _knew_ I should have taken care of him earlier," Derek breathed, hissing as he had to swerve through the plethora of traffic. He then gripped the steering wheel with both hands taut, whispering urgencies to himself and to the traffic ahead.

Once he arrived at the warehouse Jason had told him about, he parked his car around the back and reached for his phone, diving out of the car door and sprinting through the back door. The warehouse wasn't a decorative example for living space, but it certainly left enough room to allow an affinity for storage. Boxes and the like were scattered about and stacked upon each other, but other than a few tools of machinery, there was nothing else that was normal warehouse fashion.

In the middle of the room was a man in a plastic chair, lying limp with his arms dangling over the edges of the armrests. Blood caked his forehead and hands, the murky, crimson and moist liquid dripping from all around his body - his fingers, shoulders, legs, head - to fall into a large puddle on the ground, leaving a vague impression of a morbid thunderstorm. At least two pints of blood were missing, only counting the puddle, so Morgan came to the safe conclusion that he wouldn't find a heartbeat underneath the storm of blood-rain. Morgan wasn't exactly able to spot the wound that would have killed the man, so he assumed it was hidden under his clothing.

The next thing he caught sight of was the other dead bodies, five of them, killed all in differentiating manners. The one nearest Morgan had a crooked head with an indentation mark on his neck, as though someone had broken his neck, then stepped on it just for good measure. Morgan didn't fail to note the law enforcement garm that clothed the man, and it only took a second to sweep his eyes to the other bodies, noting that they too were officials.

He looked up from the horrific scene to spot Jason in a far corner of the warehouse, hunched and kneeling down; Derek almost thought that Jason was the one in trouble, maybe having a breakdown or something, until he saw another man beside him - whom Morgan then assumed was the cause of the six deaths around, going by the lack of any signature on any of the victims.

The man presumably responsible did not look much better than the men that lay on the concrete - not mentally, at least. He was curled into a fetal position, shaking hands pulling at hair and a sharp, high-pitched keening noise growling from his throat. A part of Derek wished he could confirm that it was a primitive urge and burst of instinct that told him that this man was not only dangerous, but also unstable, but it was truly only his vision and his emotion-ridden mind that could have made any sound conclusion.

He slowly approached the two forms in the far corner, immediately raising his hands in a gesture of surrender when Jason sent a warning glance that clearly conveyed what he wished to say: don't get too close.

Obeying the elder criminal, Derek didn't go closer than a couple of feet, but he still crouched beside Jason, whispering, "What's going on?" He glanced around with a swipe of a hand to gesture to all of the bodies. "What happened here?"

"I'm surprised they let you in," Jason muttered absentmindedly, momentarily ignoring Derek and leaning forward to the man, who had just began to start rocking back and forth, crossing his arms over his knees and pulling at the sides of his hair. "Shh, calm down, you're safe. You're safe. There are two people in the room now, can you see? What does the other man look like?"

The man - now that Derek can see his trembling form, he can see he looks much more like a kid, anyway - slowly begins to shake his head, the motion becoming faster and more vehement as time goes on.

"What does the other man look like? No - what does he look like?" Jason presses, and the kid finally lifts his head, revealing incredibly young features slightly dampened by the blood running down in streams down his forehead and into his eyes, proceeding to follow a path down the face usually meant for tears.

" … African American. Short hair," he finally speaks, his voice timid and slightly higher pitched than Derek had expected. Jason smiled.

"Good, good. What's the most prominent thing about him you can see?" he asks, and Derek almost - almost - turns to glare at the his elder, because the kid's answer is immediate and entices a low chuckled from Jason.

"Eyebrows. Definitely eyebrows," he says, then flinches, not expecting Jason laughter. It seems to brighten his face, and he sniffs, moving to wipe his face off with his sleeve. This prospect is quickly deemed futile, however, as the blood on his sleeve just smears more of it onto his face. Jason holds up a finger, signaling for him to wait, and pulls out a relatively clean rag, handing it to the kid, who takes it eagerly.

"What's your name, kid?" Derek asks, after the rag is returned to Jason. The kid looks up at him, squinting at his face, and swallows harshly.

"Reid. Spencer Reid - Doctor Spencer Reid, actually, but you don't have to call me Doctor - or Spencer, for that matter, you can just call me Reid, I wouldn't really mind - "

"Okay, Reid," Derek intones, cutting off what he was sure would have been a long tirade. "Obviously you've met Gideon, here - "

"Jason," the proffered man corrects politely, beginning to stand.

"Jason," Derek repeats, in a somewhat bewildered fashion. Usually it takes a while before Jason corrects you to use his first name. It requires a certain level of trust from the man; a level that this kid seemed to acheive way too quickly. Perhaps it was a mere gesture of respect, stemming from the sight of the man - who looked too much like a wounded doe to not mention the comparison - killing the people around them. "I'm Derek Morgan, you can call me Derek. Whatd'you say we get you up and outta here, huh?"

Reid nods, immediately breaking eye contact as he shuffles his arms to the wall behind him to try and get up on his own; Derek extends a hand, and Reid pauses a moment before taking it with a small thanks.

"You go on ahead; go to the back door, my car's waiting just outside," Derek said, pointing to where he entered. Reid gave a short nod, held a glance with Jason that Derek didn't have enough time to interpret, and began to walk. Derek turned back to Jason, starting to follow him as he started for the back door as well. Derek lowered his voice to a whisper intentionally, not wanting Reid to hear.

"Jason, what's going on? Who is this guy?" Jason didn't respond immediately, taking a moment to pause, before giving a response that answered none of Derek's questions.

"You've got bomb supplies in your car, right?" Jason asked, setting his slowed walk to a brisk pace, then into a steady jog. Derek, adapting quickly, glanced at him, confused and more than slightly offended.

"Of course. You know that. What's going on?"

"I need you to build me a bomb," Jason stated, causing Derek to stop in surprise while the former continued, making it to the back door, where Reid was waiting. Jason began talking to the gangly man, gesticulating in a rather complacent manner, and Derek softened his breathing to hear what they were saying as he caught up.

" … be here in a couple of minutes. Now, I need you to go ahead and get in Derek's car; he'll show you where to hide. I'll be there soon, I need to help Derek set something up," Jason was saying. He gripped Reid's shoulders with both hands - and neither Derek nor Jason missed the flinch that came at contact - and looked him straight in the eye, pressing him, "Now go."

Reid nodded again, opening the warehouse door and going through, instantly looking back at Derek once he passed the threshold. Derek looked over at Jason, who simply said, "Go get what you need. Come on, _quickly_."

Doing as he was told, Derek shuffled Reid ahead, lifting up the trunk door of his SUV and lifting the carpeted floor. It wasn't a very spacious compartment, but once Reid handed Derek the toolbox he asked for, enough room was vacated for a man to crouch inside. Reid seemed to understand what he needed to do, but he didn't look at all pleased at the notion of fitting his langly body into such a tight space.

Derek carried the toolbox inside, shutting the trunk with a last look of reassurance to the man folded inside. Once inside, he immediately set to work without need of Jason's encouragement. While he worked, Jason began to fill him in on the specifics.

"Bomb needs to be deadly, capable of killing at least six people, and it needs a timer as well, so that we can get away before we're hit - "

"Jason, what happened here? Is the guy in my _trunk_ a serial killer?" He paused, finished with taking out all of his supplies. He set to work immediately, building art on a whim with Jason's specifics. He took two pieces that required twisting together, and looked up at Jason in the meantime. "You trust me, man, I know you do, so tell me. Is he the serial killer I couldn't find?"

Finished with the twisting, Derek slid rods into his mouth, catching them with his teeth as he took great care in applying powder to one of the powder pockets and looking up at Jason expectantly. He, admittedly, didn't actually know if Jason trusted him or not. But if he was good at something, it was thinking (and forging) on his feet, and manipulating people wasn't hard if you had leverage on them: if Jason didn't tell him about the incident now, he'd lose Derek's trust in an instant, and they both knew that Derek was a valuable asset that he couldn't lose.

Jason paused for a moment, looking resolutely into Derek's eyes and not down at his hands that had started a nervous, probably subconscious, wringing.

"I killed them," he intoned forcefully, perhaps a little too forcefully, leaving Derek to wonder if he was lying or not. Jason continued nonetheless. "And I need a cover, fast. A bomb with a timer, capable of killing at least six people, and with a hard body, it needs to be specifically known for its shrapnel - "

"Wait, wait, hold up. You said six people; there's only five bodies here," Derek pointed out thinly, and watched in trepidation as Jason swallowed carefully, speaking slowly and deliberately.

"Is it finished?" Jason avoided the question, with a tone that hinted that Derek should drop the subject.

"Almost … " Derek practically growled; not many things could anger him in a sparked moment, but ignorance of art was definitely one of them. "Patience, Jason. You know that."

There was a moment of tense silence, which Derek then saw fit to fill with, "The shell I'm using is bendable, and durable, but not enough to withstand the kind of reaction the explosion will make. It all depends on how much damage control you want; I can put more shrapnel in there for maximum injury to anyone closeby, or less to let the cops focus on the explosion. The second is more tempered and less dangerous, but the first, despite its danger level, is extremely hard to get out of range from."

Jason nodded all the while Derek was informing him of this, and finally said, "Compromise. Put enough that we'll be able to get away safely, but also enough that it'll be dangerous to anyone close by."

Derek refused the urge to argue that it would be dangerous to anyone close by anyway, and put his mind back to putting the correct amount of shrapnel in the small pocket inside the metal pipe. Once he was finished, he indicated to Jason, and handed him a remote.

"It's on a timer, but you can detonate it earlier; top button. And Gideon, this better be good; I used my best supplies for this," Derek warned, and Jason gave a soft, "Of course." He looked at the button reverently, then around at the warehouse. Something he said earlier crossed Derek's mind suddenly, and he jolted.

"Jason?" he caught the man's attention. "Earlier, you said you were surprised they let me in. Who's they?"

Jason looked distantly at Derek's chest, or, more accurately, through his chest, then made eye contact. "We have to go." He began to make for the exit, but Derek stopped him with one hand on his shoulder; Derek already had his suspicions, and it wasn't good. The vague sound of sirens in the distance didn't soothe him either.

"At least tell me this, then," he pressed, "Who's the seventh person that this bomb's intended to kill?"

Jason gave a wan smile, one that any other person that didn't know Jason would have seen as lopsided. "Me."

* * *

Grains forming lines, obscurely seen and rarely visualized, spinning around in dizzying circles, flickering life to the eyes then dying away, almost teasing to the mind but rather entrancing, dancing in a pattern only the most professional could follow, singing with a sharp crackle as it relentlessly shrivels up its food and dances higher, sings louder, flickers upward and teasing the clouds with its tendrils and swirls and eddies all creating a gigantic whorl, as if it were a morphing fingerprint, sifting through different identities of different people, twisting together to make one large pattern of a twisting helix of all colors, _god, it's beautiful …_

There was a tugging on his arm. He absentmindedly shoved the thing away, caught mesmerized by the flames licking at the building before him, spiraling through his mind, twisting around him and singing oh so sweetly, squeezing his shoulders … no, no, that was something else, shaking his shoulders, now.

He was snapped back into reality as his senses seemed to begin to work properly again, and he could hear someone's desperate pleas, trying to shake him back into reality and begging him for … something.

Derek opened his eyes he didn't even realize he had closed, and felt his knees begin to buckle beneath himself. They didn't want to hold him up, and his arms didn't seem to want to even be connected to his shoulders; every limb he had felt as heavy as lead, begging him to just lie down, just for a while, just to go to sleep …

He blinked the haziness from his vision, catching sight of Jason's face incredibly close to his own. Jerking back violently, Derek spluttered for a moment, willing his tongue to move and not just weigh down his mouth. Every muscle in his body was telling him to go to sleep, but Jason was telling him different. He … he had to listen to Jason, he needed to listen, what was he saying? Derek strained his hearing, willing himself to hear over the faint ringing in his ears he thought he recognized as singing earlier …

" … up! We have to go, now! Come on, we don't have anymore time to waste!" Derek vaguely registered that Jason was screaming at him, too focused at the beauty that was behind him, at the light coming from the fire just beyond his form …

He was moving, but not of his own accord. He didn't mind, much, because he still had a clear view of the fire, of the flames just down the hill that they were on …

A window. There was a window blocking him from the fire. He cleared his throat and shook his head, recognizing the tint of the window and the door that was connected to it. He was in his own SUV, in the backseat, with Jason in the driver's seat, putting the pedal to the floor violently. Derek almost cried out, outraged by the manhandling of his car, but didn't say anything as the car began to move, and there was a loud thump from just behind him.

Heavy eyebrows drew together, and Derek opened the small flap that opens to the trunk, peering inside. A bloody, shivering, whimpering man that looked rather like a wounded doe … Reid. Derek let out a small, "huh," before shaking the cobwebs from his mind and remembering what manners he had.

"You alright down there, kid?" he called, receiving no response, just a man that curled tighter into himself. Derek blinked a couple of times, trying to clear his head, as he called to the front, "He's unresponsive, Jason."

"Keep him stable for a few more minutes; we're almost there," came the response, and Derek nodded, despite the fact that Jason wouldn't have been able to see that, with his eyes on the road instead.

Derek turned and looked down at the man in his trunk, offering soft platitudes that didn't seem to do any good; after a while, Derek stopped and, upon seeing no reaction, turned around to Jason. "So," he began. "Is there any reason you can tell me that you had to fake your death?"

He received a semi-relieved smile, and a low chuckle. "Get some rest, Derek. We may need to take a quick pit-stop."

By the time Jason stopped the car at their final destination, Derek had passed out, halfway hanging over the backseat into the trunk.

* * *

The incident had made the newspapers.

"'Boston Incident kills seven people, suspect known, not apprehended,'" Derek read aloud, from the newspaper that had been slid across the glass table to stop right in front of him.

First page. He was slightly proud. And yet, at the same time, the full-profile picture of him staining the front page struck fear into him instead of pride. The public now knew that Derek Morgan was the most notorious 'shrapnel-bomb killer' to ever be known. They had researched into his past, and uncovered every single bombing he had completed, a full-length summary available on page three.

"You understand our predicament," the woman in front of him stressed, and he glanced up at her, turning to the comics section of the paper and beginning to read the funnies.

"I understand," Derek agreed without looking up. He continued, folding the paper back up and sliding it back in front of the woman so it landed directly so she could read it. Of course, she didn't reach for it in the slightest; she must have already read it dozens of times. "I understand that if you do accept me, I'll be the first person you will have employed that the public knows about. I also know that that makes me the most notorious out of all of your personnel, not only giving you a good reputation, but also letting any opposers that your organization is not one that tends to screw around."

He leaned forward, raising one eyebrow and keeping his words steady. "I know that I am a valuable asset, with my extensive knowledge of FBI training, list of connections inside various Natural organizations, ability to spread rumours that could decimate an innocent person's life in two days, and my friendship with Jason Gideon which, I am sure, will prove undoubtedly significant in your choice of whether or not I am accepted.

"I know that if you refuse me, Jason can and will make your life difficult, if not accept me anyway. I know that if you refuse me, I will take every dirty idea about your organization and twist them into rumours that will ruin any kind of stability you have; and half of you are already in too deep with the Natural government, I'm sure they won't hesitate to lock you away when I give them your location. And I know most definitely that you know all of what I've said is true.

"So why don't we all save each other some time?"

The five men and women in front of him recoiled jerkily, until the woman in the middle - the only person he had to impress, really - smiled rather ferally, as if she had just seen her wounded prey free for grabs out on the playing field. She extended her wrinkled hand, which Derek took instantly.

"Welcome to The Syndicate," Erin Strauss proclaimed, and Derek nodded with a sure smile as he shook her hand firmly.

"My pleasure, ma'am."

* * *

 **A/N: Welp, that's it for Derek! Next is Gideon, which is going to be really fun, 'cause been at the Syndicate the longest! Hope you liked, R &R, and I'll come up with Gideon's chapter sometime. Hopefully soon. Oh, and I definitely don't own Criminal Minds. That's why I'm writing them as criminals, and not writing the show's script, instead.**

 **See you later!**

 **~IsomorphicTARDIS**


	3. Chapter 3: Jason Gideon

**A/N: Alright, I'm back for another chapter - and hopefully you are too, which, now that I'm thinking over it, is a dumb thing to say, because how could you be reading this now if you weren't ... okay. Anyway, this chapter is on Gideon - keep in mind that I chose to focus less on his backstory and his story of his 30 years of being in the Bureau, and more on his person-in-general-ness, if that makes sense. I wanted to do a pov of a character that I saw Gideon as, and I think it went ... pretty well? Eh, just see for yourself.**

 **I don't own them, blah, blah, they're not mine, blah, blah, read and review, blah blah, you know the drill. enjoy!**

* * *

Jason Gideon was the first in the team, and therefore the most important building block for the group. At age twenty-three, he had been approached by a man, soon to be known as his mentor, named Max Ryan. Quite notorious in the criminal world, Max Ryan was primarily known for the capture and subsequent deaths of many of the FBI's top agents, and even some agents in the Private Sector; this, of course, was unknown to Jason, who, at twenty-three, wasn't the most social of people.

Not to say he wasn't a criminal; quite far from the opposite, he had been killing since he was ten years old, coming back to his house bloody and tired, washing himself off with his garden hose then slipping into the shower to reduce suspicion from his mother. He was an intelligent young man, an unfortunate characteristic for his victims, who were always kids his own age, still leaving room for a year or two in the ledger, if ever he preferred a challenge.

His stressor, to many people, remains still unknown, just as most of his personal life; he does not speak of his life, and when he does, it is always personal experience that reveals almost nothing. Should he be categorized in sense of his words and meaning, he is always described as deliberate and fastidious, crafting his words as if they were a stream of light, filling the mind as if it were a dark room and dissipating the darkness around, to any open eye. Should one look closer, the analogy of light shall be lost, as his words are simple chess pieces that conceal the darkness in his meaning, the tangible wood of the pieces simple shells of representation that stand for the pieces themselves - his words work in an analogous manner. If Bundy's ability to charm passengers into his car was his art, than Jason's art was twisting words just as similarly, but instead merely as a distraction to hide the real meaning he is conveying.

He was approached by Max with these abilities already sharpened and moulded for his own uses, leaving him an intelligent, studious man and killer, or, in short, not a man to flippantly accept proposals at first mention, especially when said proposals could potentially change his life. When Max had offered him a position, Jason had been less than enthusiastic to the visible eye; he knew in that moment that if he were to fully secure a position in the organization (which, in fact, he was _entirely_ enthusiastic about, though he couldn't show it, much to his chagrin), he would have to be as difficult as possible, yet not to the point of inducing reluctance to disallow him inside the organization. So, naturally, he asked for a week-long internship _with_ pay, just to test it out. In the meantime, he would submit his applications for other places, and see how those go.

Of course, that's what he told Max to tell his superiors, while actually he would be taking his time before his internship to do his own research, finding what he could about this organization from the outside. Max had stared at Jason for a moment, probably to evaluate the younger one's sincerity, and when he found no ridicule in his expression, he began to laugh, then informed Jason of his blatant impudence. Jason smiled, played along, resisting the urge to respond seriously that that was the entire point.

Jason didn't tend often to rely heavily on rumours, and disliked the notion of only gathering information through word of mouth, but it seemed to be the only pool of info about this organization. There didn't seem to be anything substantial on the organization itself; the members, on the other hand, could fill cabinets at the FBI - and probably do. And one can learn much about an organization by the type of people invited to work there.

Taking from the rumours that he had heard, Jason compartmentalized each piece of information in his mind. First of all, the organization was completely secret, and completely opposite of the Natural government, both in motive and in assembly, alike to the Third Law of Motion; for each Natural organization, there was an equal and opposite Criminal organization. Jason had been recruited into the BAU equivalent, though they covered a multitude of purposes. Inside of this organization, there were sections put together by each member of the main team.

That was all of the information that Jason could gather from rumour that was, at least, somewhat reasonable. He didn't gather much more from the files of the employees or employers of the organization.

All that was left was the internship.

His first day, Jason was given the immediate tour of the organization; it turned out to be a labyrinth of rooms and hallways that he was sure would take him more than a few years to completely memorize. He followed Max's footsteps by ear, attuning the rest of his senses to pick up things around him, smelling and tasting the musty cabinet air change to clear, almost sharp air, feeling the draft as people pass by and running his hands along the rough concrete walls, and last but definitely not least, peering as intently as possible at everything while walking at the brisk pace Max had set.

Many of the rooms Jason could get a glimpse inside of looked to be training rooms; at least, they looked like training rooms until you caught sight of the blood staining the walls and floor and ceilings and the bodies similarly scattered around, creating the visual of a killing room. Max apparently noticed his curiosity, as he glanced back at Jason with a smirk.

"Ah, the poor, young, trainees. You see, usually, any and all applicants coming into this organization are required to undergo a training process; but, to shed all pleasantries, it's a killing contest, down to the core. The one trainee that happens to come out on top, and doesn't die, is evaluated by all members of the team, and then considered to either join the team or be transferred to another organization.

"Well," he chuckled softly, looking far too pleased to Jason's eyes to be talking as casually as he was. "I say _transferred_. Naturally, we could never let the competition get our wastes, could we? Especially if our judgement is compromised, for some reason.

"Anyway," he continued, the mirth fading only slightly from his face. "It seems that you're a special case. Your blunt brashness and previous criminal history - off the books, now, of course, we've already burned everything the Natural government has on you - makes you a Very Important Potential employee, apparently."

"A paid intern for a week, and you've already burnt any kind of case the opposition had on me?" Jason remarked, raising an eyebrow.

Max smirked back at him. "Like I said: VIP employee. Besides, even if you did join the Natural government, you would most definitely be recruited by us as an inside ear."

"Hm," Jason hummed in contemplation, oddly enough _not_ concerned with how much control this organization seemed to have over his life Perhaps he would've been more bothered about it if joining this organization wasn't what he had planned to do with his life in the first place.

Max continued the tour, presenting the training rooms, the cabins and personal rooms, the conference rooms, the bathrooms, and even the entrance hallways to the different sections. Jason couldn't help but notice how each section's hallway melded into its own style, ones that Jason assumed could characterize the sections' leaders. Max's was rather grey and bland, though the rough concrete smoothed out considerably, and the corners of the hall curved inward, as if one was walking through a cylindrical tunnel. If Max noticed that Jason was already profiling his possible teammates, he didn't say or do anything about it.

The end of the tour came when Max lead him down a couple of hallways, the passerby becoming more scarce as they proceeded; a place not many frequented, and, judging by the overly musty smell indicating more dust than in the other halls, a place not even the janitorial staff liked to visit, meaning it was probably the hall for officials, dealing with the politics of other organizations or the higher-ups.

They finally arrived at a door at the end of the hall, and Max turned to Jason, placing two hands on the younger man's shoulders. He looked him directly in the eyes, donning the most serious expression Jason had seen on him as of yet.

"Listen closely. Through that door," he indicated with a tilt of his head to the door behind him, "are the people that will eventually judge whether you live or die. Keep calm, use your manners, speak only when spoken to, and if you have any common sense in your being, _behave_."

He sighed, raising an eyebrow. "But, knowing you, you'll do your own thing, huh? Well, let it be known that I tried. It was nice knowin' you, kid." His hands fell from Jason's shoulders, and Jason thinned his lips into a line, narrowing his eyebrows.

"You assume that I won't be coming back," Jason says, more as a statement than a question. "Well then, old man, watch and learn."

He ignored Max's indignant snap of, "Hey, I've only got four years on you, smartass!", and sauntered into the door in front of him, preparing himself for the worst.

The first thing he glimpsed was the blood smeared in a violent splatter on the opposite wall. The cause of the spectacle was obvious enough; of five chairs placed in a horseshoe formation around a table, only four were filled by living bodies. A bullet hole was prominent in the dead man's forehead, blood seeping in various streams down his face, making the illusion of tears of blood streaming down his face. Jason was not perturbed in the slightest by this, though he did offer a moment of hesitation of abrupt silence, it being his equivalent of a mourning pause.

He took the nearest seat that was obviously meant for him, in the top of the curve of the horseshoe-shaped table. He understood at once why the seating arrangements were placed as such. It was designed to show just how well one worked under heavy amounts of stress, with the equivalent of executioners surrounding the guest; however, Jason could not determine whether or not the recently killed man in the fourth chair from the left was another attempt to place stress, or, rather, fear, upon the guest, but either way, he was intent on staying objective throughout the meeting.

And so, as he placidly took a seat, he gazed at each member in front of him in turn, profiling each as much as possible simply on looks; two remaining men sat on the outside edges of the table, each domineering a stance that would make any submissive cower and bow their heads upon visual contact. One seemed to be nearing his sixties, while the other looked more near his thirties. They were dressed quite formally, though not as formal as to wear clothing that was outright garish, like a bowtie.

The two women at the table seemed to balance the power-field in terms of gender, but the general persona of the younger woman (dressed much more formally and affluently, and despite the make-up, Jason could still tell she was only a few years older than him) suggested she was of higher ranking than anyone in this room, and therefore probably not someone who frequents working in this organization; that, and Jason figured that teammates don't make habits of shooting each other in the head, even in a criminal organization. She was obviously responsible for the dead man, her fingers curled around her gun, recently used, as obvious by the scent emanating from it. She held an expression of professional curiosity and great indifference to the murder she had just committed. Jason fleetingly wondered what the motive was behind killing the man, but then realized there wouldn't have to be; if the woman was as high-ranking as suspected, no one would dare question her in the slightest. In fact, even the dominant stances that all three other people held in the room were rather dulled down compared to the control this woman held in even a glance; Jason understood.

She was the only candidate that mattered, at the moment. Had she not been there, Jason probably would have been judged by every other person in the room equally, but now that she was present, the general opinion would be swayed to meet her standards. She was in control.

She was who he needed to impress.

"Jason Gideon," she started, beginning to stand. Jason did as well, knowing that if he crossed this woman, he would not live to see the light again. She extended her hand, and Jason took it with more confidence than he felt - of course, saying that not to minimalize the amount of confidence Jason held in the situation, for the only thing he currently lacked was a sure and intimate understanding of the person he was to impress. "My name is Erin Strauss; you may call me ma'am while addressing me directly. I'm the so-called, _man-behind-the-curtain_ 's assistant, if you prefer, and I oversee the organizations in the Criminal government, specifically the equivalent of the FBI."

"Pleased to meet you, ma'am," Jason articulated clearly, shaking the woman's hand with a strong grip, notifying her that he had nothing to hide; and indeed he didn't, for he knew with almost complete certainty that the organization had already put together every single detail of his life for this woman to review.

"Please, I'm sure the pleasantries are unnecessary," Erin waved a flippant hand, taking her seat once more. Jason hesitated for just a moment to make sure she had sat down first, before he followed suit. And, while Jason was fairly certain that pleasantries were, in fact, necessary, for he only knew the strict core details of his job, he knew that first impressions were significant, and he would have to conform to whatever social restrictions this woman set. Of course, he wasn't too upset, as he was a man that preferred to cut the unnecessary out of social encounters, and in fear of being incredibly hypocritical, he figured it was essential to follow Erin's lead.

"You're much quieter than I expected of a man with your … temerity," Erin observed, and Jason shrugged nonchalantly, glancing pointedly to the dead man with the hole in his head.

"Hm, I fear my self-preservation tends to override my personality when faced with a fatal threat."

Erin paused, tilting her head in a somewhat amused consideration. "You see me as a threat?"

Jason hummed in quiet contemplation. "Not a threat, no. More an … obstacle, that I shall have to accommodate in my analysis of, what will inevitably become, the lasting length of the rest of my life."

"You believe you will be accepted here, already?"

"I don't see many other paid interns around here, ma'am," Jason noted. "That and, I have been informed by a source I can only assume to be reliable, that I will either be accepted here, or killed in a manner not so direct as to be phrased as an 'execution'. Perhaps it is that aforementioned self-preservation speaking, but I would very much like to at least be _able_ to consider the rest of my existence as an available option.

Erin paused for a moment, pursing her lips and leaning to one side, seeming to contemplate Jason with an intent gaze. "I'll make you a deal," she started, and Jason nodded slightly, politely, for her to continue. "I will cordially invite you, personally, into this organization, with a full job starting today with full pay, on one condition."

Jason raised his eyebrows, knowing the gravity of her offer, and raised his hands-palm upward, dropping them back onto the armrests of the chair a moment later. "Name it, ma'am."

Erin smirked slightly, leaning forward and clasping her hands in front of her, on the glass table. "You can have the job, right now, if you can tell me why I killed that man to my immediate left."

There was a moment while Jason made sense of this concept and then pondered all of the obvious, generic answers: Revenge, Jealousy, Compulsion, Anger, Mental Affliction, Belief, Mercy, Greed, and Self-Defense. Eliminating Jealousy, Mental Affliction, Belief, Mercy, Greed, and Self-Defense, which seemed to be far out of the question, Jason was left with Revenge, Compulsion, Anger, and Greed. Revenge wasn't as likely as the other three, as there was only a single shot to the forehead, with no indication of overkill, or a crime of extreme passion - which also ruled out Anger. However, it could've just been that the woman was incredibly organized and trained to not leave any visible evidence to specialists such as profilers. Compulsion wasn't a viable option to choose, because of the woman's amount of organization and control; if she had to feed a compulsion, she would have done it somewhere more private, to elicit the most pleasurable fix. Unless she got off on the reactions of others at her victims' deaths; considering percentages, it was probably on par with Greed. And Jason was beginning to sense Greed was the one gaping hole in the woman's authoritarian-like control.

Her need to be dominant over every person in her general vicinity indicated a need for control - perhaps a compulsive need, but if so, it was hidden quite well under all of her organization - and those who defied her were most likely done away with, probably by Strauss herself, because of her obsession to be in control. Meaning Greed was the most likely reason for the man's death; perhaps the now-dead man had challenged her in some way, purposefully or not, or maybe he had been conspiring against her, and she caught on.

But something in Jason's brain told him differently. Something … something was off with that explanation. Of course, it fit completely and logically, but something ate at Jason, telling him that couldn't be it. He was missing something.

"No," Jason responded. that couldn't possibly be it, for if he said it and was wrong … Erin paused a moment, before tilting her head.

"No?" she echoed in a dangerously smooth voice.

"Excuse me, I mean to say there was no reason," Jason rectified hurriedly, continuing as Erin propped an eyebrow - a sign for him to go on. He sighed internally, and continued his line of thought. "There was no reason for you to kill him; no personal reason, anyway. When I first entered the room, I realized that you would need to set me in a controlled environment in order to accurately assess me; but your curiosity got the better of you.

"Obviously you've heard something of me from whoever could possibly be higher ranking than you - and I doubt there are a lot of people in that position - and what you heard from rumour or something else was nothing less than extraordinary. To be honest, it's a bit disheartening to know I was recommended as good enough to bring you here, as I would always rather be underestimated than overestimated, but the point still stands. You were curious to see if I was as good as you had heard, so you set up a scenario where I was to be put in a position of great stress; you shot the first person you saw in the face - an overall indicative gesture, a shot to the face, implying some sort of anger or resentment on a personal level - to watch my reaction closely.

"And it seems I've lived up to your expectations, by the expression on your face. Either that or I've completely missed the mark, and you are just generally appalled at my attempt to predict your motive, and quite possibly offended to the extreme," he finished, making sure to keep his expression as blank and innocent as possible as he casually threw in an afterthought of his own mortality.

Erin hesitated for one moment, before standing (Jason did as well), and plucking the gun from the table, clicking the safety off and pointing it straight into Jason's face. He held his calm persona and expression, maintaining strict eye contact, even as Erin's eyes crinkled at the edges and she turned the gun around, holding it by the barrel and offering the handle to Jason. He took it with his left hand, and took the hand that Erin offered to shake with his right.

"Welcome to the rest of your life," she said, and Jason nodded politely. "If you'll follow David Rossi, the man right outside, he should direct you to your office and living quarters."

Jason smiled, a lopsided smile that he would come to use many times later in his life, and walked out of the door, leaving the four people in the room to clean up the corpse by themselves. Jason paused for a moment, seeing the man, David Rossi, just outside, and instantly allowing the profiling thoughts wash over him.

He was a rather handsome man, and Jason momentarily wondered if everyone he was going to meet was only going to look a few years younger than himself. However, David's persona seemed different than the others; he seemed more relaxed, more smooth. He was probably as suave as he looked with slicked-back obsidian hair, and a fair smile that more resembled a mocking smirk than any expression of contentment. His overall elegant demeanor was likely to leave a clear impression on many minds, both male and female; Jason figured, perhaps that was rather the point. A slick criminal may be the most stereotypical kind, but there was no denying that they were effective.

"You made it out," the man remarked immediately, with just a hint of his underlying respect showing and faux shock covering the rest of it. He extended a hand for Jason to shake, and began to lead him down the hallway, beginning his introduction. "Name's David Rossi, you can call me Dave. Welcome to the Syndicate, your new home. I suspect you're going to like it here; we've got all the types: serial killers, serial offenders, dirty cops, you name it, we've probably got it. I'm gonna introduce you first to the team, and we'll start from there, but I'm telling you now, we're less like a team and more like a group that meets every other month and occasionally comes to another for help. Anyway, first you've got Max Ryan, who I'm sure you met earlier … "

Jason smiled his lopsided smile, and mumbled under his breath, "Welcome home, indeed."

* * *

 **A/N: Well, that's it for this installation. Erm, I wouldn't expect a new chapter soon, because I can already feel myself slipping out of Criminal Minds and back into Sherlock, and the chapters that I will write aren't going to be the most exciting for me; Elle is going to be difficult, J.J. is my least favorite character, and Garcia's too ... bright, for my taste. But I bet I can put my own spin on that.**

 **Anyway, you don't wanna listen to me blather on about the entire plot I've got set up for this ... so R &R, and I'll see you guys, hopefully sooner than later!**

 **~IsomorphicTARDIS**

 **P.S., yes, I know that Strauss is technically younger than Gideon, but I want her to be seen by Gideon as a figure that's not _necessarily_ intimidating, but someone not to mess with, simply because later if he had trouble with her, he and the team could just make a plan to execute her, y'know? And it's easier to do that if she's older than him when they meet. We can't have her being executed, right now. I'll be needing her later. *mischievous grin***


	4. Chapter 4: Spencer Reid

**A/N: Hey, folks! I know, it's been an eternity. I have one small mistake to mend before I begin however, and that is the following:**

 **On the tin of this fic, it states that it is slightly Reid-centric. Upon writing this, I had no idea that I had underestimated my brain's fascination with our favorite genius. That is, until it decided to spew out roughly 20,000 words just covering his part of the deal. Out of a total rough 37,000 words, this obviously holds the majority. So I'm going to go ahead and revise what I stated earlier. This fic will be _majorly_ Reid-centric.**

 **Now that that's out of the way, I have one more thing to cover. This chapter is completely unrevised. Completely and utterly. It's at its barest minimum and quite frankly probably some of the worst writing I've ever done. The point of this chapter is not to prove that I can write well. This chapter is me proving to myself that I can sit down and write 20,000 words in one sitting. I am proud of this chapter, regardless of cliche's and terrible writing. This is an accomplishment for me.**

 **But, anyway, I hope you enjoy this chapter - you deserve it for putting up with me all this time - and leave a review down at the end if you like.**

 **And now, without further ado... Chapter Four: Spencer Reid!**

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Six months. Six months of 'rest', that they gave him to 'recover' from the 'incident'. Needless to say, Jason wasn't overall impressed with the organization's pitiful attempt at consoling him for the Boston Incident that they 'should have prevented, we can assure you nothing like this will ever happen under our watch again'.

Contrary to popular belief, Jason wasn't scarred, or mentally ill, or even _dying_ , as someone around the tech department began spreading for who-knows-what reason. He was simply confused.

Confused to the point of mental hesitation regarding judgement and spatial and existential ideals, _perhaps_ , but also just merely confused.

He was confused as to how a man - and barely that, as he was just scraping past twenty-one and certainly looked younger - could possibly have such a lack of empathy to impale one man with another man's spine without blinking, but simultaneously have such an abundance of empathy to have something akin to a mental breakdown with an attempted-suicide session afterwards.

Well. _Akin_ was not the word, but neither was a definite _have_ , for the man seemed so close to the brink of insanity that there was no possibility of backing away - and yet, that was precisely what the younger man had done. He had so intricately and _intimately_ carved into a man until his facial features were unrecognizable, with the expression of utmost calm, and then proceeded to drop the knife in his hand and back unsteadily into a corner and curl into the fetal position, whispering over and over, "No, no, no… "

Jason just didn't understand. He had set boundaries and standards in his mind when he was young: a chess board held sixty-four squares, getting caught by law enforcement was inevitable and cautioned about every day to all criminals, and there was a very distinct line between a lack of something and an abundance of it - especially when it comes to empathy.

But this man seemed to break the standards by which Jason considered existence. He seemed to be able to have a mental breakdown, then pull himself out of it before he spiraled down into de-evolution. And, just to add the icing to the contradictory, metaphorical cake, Spencer Reid also appeared to be a genius with an IQ of 187 and a vague diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia.

That, Jason knew, was what piqued an emotional response in him; whoever Spencer Reid would meet in the future would always think 'crazy' before 'genius'. They would disregard his intelligence and replace it instead for fear of his mental illness. Jason, knowing that the man would not need nor want any pity from him, refused to feel pity for him, and suddenly found it difficult to explain why he 'hung out', as the kids would say, with the younger man for his entire six months of leave.

He realized why sometime later. His son, Stephen, hadn't ever learned of Jason's job, what he did to put food on the table, before Jason's wife filed for divorce and Jason was reduced to sending them money in the mail along with child support. When Jason and his wife had separated, the criminal had been able to explain only a little to his son, not wanting to breach the topic of what he did for a living, and the result had been Stephen renouncing his place as Jason's son. It had been the equivalent of losing his son, and it could have acted as Jason's stressor, if he hadn't had his years ago. His grandfather then stepped in as Stephen's father, being a paternal figure to the young boy, as Jason could not.

Now, it seemed as if Jason had a second chance. Spencer Reid was a genius at twenty-two and obviously at least a little insane, but he also dressed like a kid playing grown-ups, inevitably ended up expressing what he felt clearly on his face like a child unfamiliar with the concept of secrets, and certainly had enough intellectual curiosity to satisfy the whims of a toddler that knew complex mathematics.

It was Spencer Reid's _situation_ that originally intrigued Jason, but it was the genius' youth and personality that incited a feeling of paternal bond and caused Jason to view the man as more of a son before anything else.

And so, since his six-month leave had begun, Jason found himself walking down the halls everyday from the classroom where he taught, to the in-building sanitarium in The Syndicate. The instant he was notified that Spencer had been moved there because he had failed the psych-exam - which was a feat in and of itself, for a criminal organization - and had been moved indefinitely to the sanitarium, Jason had gone to visit him almost every day.

"Doctor Reid," Jason greeted, the first time he arrived inside the sanitarium and moved to meet Spencer. Jason _would_ have eyed the singular room warily - he was never sure when the organization's higher-ups would finally deem him insane and throw him in here - if not for Jason's overwhelming want for Spencer to be comfortable. If Jason were outwardly wary, it would no doubt affect Spencer's mood and second impression of him. "It's good to see you, again."

The genius was sitting at a table in the far back corner, farthest from the singular window in the room and also from any of the other people. For a moment, Jason wondered if the construction workers had meant to put a table separate from the others just as simple courtesy for a possibility of an anti-social criminal, but he soon brushed away the thought as a stray distraction; it wasn't important at the moment. What _did_ seem important was the chessboard laid out in front of the genius, from which said genius tore his gaze to glance up at Jason's familiar voice.

"Gideon - er, sir," Spencer greeted with a wince at the blossoming awkward tension. He hurriedly added before Jason could open his mouth, "It's good to see you, too. And, it's Spencer. You - uh - you don't have to call me Doctor."

Jason nodded, but nevertheless did note, "It's your title." He gestured to an open seat across from Spencer, and the genius nodded gently. "And while we're at it, you can call me Jason. Who are you playing?"

"Myself," Spencer spoke meekly, bowing his head and sneaking an arm forward to move a pawn. Jason hesitated, calculating the risks in his head with little to no trouble. He then picked up one of the pawns nearest him and moved it forward two spaces. If Spencer felt that Jason was intruding, he didn't give any signals, verbal or nonverbal.

"You're young. At least in your twenties, a little awkward, but you more than make up for it with an IQ of 187 and an eidetic memory," Jason intoned, glancing upward at Spencer's asking gaze. He added, "I read your file. It's damn impressive."

Spencer hummed, tuning back into the chess game and picking one of his knights from the board and placing it closer to the enemy cavalry, slinking his hand back under the table. He then paused. "They don't put things like, 'a little awkward' in professional files."

"No, they don't," Jason conceded, and moved one of his pieces into oncoming danger. Sacrifices, he reminded himself, must be made. A little give, a little take. Spencer immediately accepted the sacrifice, taking the pawn at once. It was Jason's turn. "I wasn't hired twenty-eight years ago for my intuition, believe it or not. Not many people are; but I'm sure the organization could make an exception for a few."

Spencer leaned backward in his chair, narrowing his eyebrows and gazing rather warily at Jason. It should be noted that the curiosity in his expression far outweighed the suspicion. "Why are you telling me this?"

Jason pushed a breath out from between his teeth, and he moved to capture one of Spencer's pawns. Once he took his hand off of his piece, he stared up into Spencer's eyes, wishing to convey honesty, and replied, "I think you should apply for a place."

Spencer, instead of scoffing as Jason had expected - though, it wasn't based on any real evidence; after all, Spencer did seem the more meek and outgoing-only-when-being-smart kind of person, so all Jason could think of was that he had been assuming Spencer would give the normal reaction of a normal person; a notion, in itself, that certainly had to be flawed because Spencer was far from normal - gave a fond quirk of the lips that could have been interpreted as rueful, and replied almost immediately.

"I believe they've already set up a place for me here, sir, and I'm fairly certain they don't want me leaving," he remarked, leaning forward again to continue the game. Jason peered at Spencer, attempting to unravel the ball of twine that the genius seemed to surround his motives in. Caught in his pondering, he suddenly remembered to glance at his watch, and he sent a second-long sneer at the glass object, sighing heavily. He turned to Spencer, who had watched the ordeal with interest.

"I'm afraid I'll have to cut this short, Spencer. I've got a class to lecture a few rooms over," he said, pushing his chair away from the table and beginning to get his stuff together as he stood. He paused. "Unless, of course, you'd like to come with me."

He could see the spark of interest in Spencer's eyes light aflame, and he was sure he could see them burning even brighter, fueled with regret as he said, "No, no, I wouldn't want to intrude. That and Tim over there doesn't really like people leaving the room." He pointed with his gaze, where Jason looked over at the bulk of a man standing by the exit of the sanitarium, then back at Spencer.

"Well, I'm sure that we can find our way past him, don't you think?" he offered, and beckoned Spencer up with a tilt of his head. Spencer hesitated for one more moment, teeth pulling at bottom lip and ripping skin from its place, before he stood shakily. He seemed a bit too unstable to stand, but after a few seconds, he seemed to get the hang of it; only his hands continued their visible shaking. He grabbed for his messenger bag, but Jason stopped him.

"We won't be gone for that long," he said, and Spencer slowly lowered the bag to the ground with a rueful look. Jason gave a half-smile. "Come on, let's go."

Spencer nodded, following Jason to the other side of a room, his gait less than a real gait and more of a half-shuffle with a distinct lack of confidence that left his hands awkwardly fidgeting by his side; his gaze swept every corner of the room, presumably for anything that could possibly be a threat. Jason doubted for a moment if he should take the man out of the sanitarium so soon, but then concluded that he was pretty sure it was the sanitarium itself that was keeping this man unstable.

Once they got up to Tim, Spencer began to rub his feet against each other, his hands' fidgeting increasing in vehemence and speed, and he swallowed repeatedly. Jason blinked, tore his gaze from the younger man, and held up his ID for Tim to see clearly.

"We're going three rooms over, to conduct a seminar. He'll be back in an hour at the most," Jason said, not bothering to lower his voice to a whisper as he added, "And I'm sure you'll find it in yourself to not tell anyone, lest you'd like for me to send you home to your loved ones as an abstract painting."

Spencer looked rather appalled at the notion, as Jason could glimpse in his peripheral vision, but the older man paid no mind, and simply maintained stable eye contact with Tim as he said strongly, "Go ahead, Spencer, I'll be right behind you."

Spencer hurriedly shuffled past, glancing back several times before the door he walked through blocked his vision. Jason came through a few moments later, saying rather casually, "He won't bother you anymore."

"Who said he bothered me?" Spencer retorted, though it held not a smidge of heat. They began walking down the hall, coming to the door which Jason opened at once, holding it for Spencer and giving a soft smile along with an answer.

"Your file did," Jason responded shortly, and barely caught the edge of Spencer's mouth twitching upward once more as the older man walked ahead to the front of the room, through the various risers filled with seats.

"They don't put things like who bothers who in professional files," Spencer stated, just loud enough for Jason to hear.

"No, they don't," Jason replied, his low timbre easy to hear even from a distance. "This seminar is on the basics, for the trainees just accepted without an idea of what this organization does."

"Accepted?" Spencer asks, and Jason knew the question was rhetorical, as Spencer then muttered with a sweeping gaze over all of the people that were looking around in quite a terrified manner, "More like abducted."

Jason ignored the last bit of Spencer's sentence and cleared his throat, cutting Spencer's attention from all of the students in the room, and bringing the students' attention to Jason. Spencer hurriedly rushed in and sat down in the closest seat to the front that was the furthest away from anyone and everyone. Jason locked eyes with him once, before flashing him a quick smirk and turning his attention to the crowd of trainees.

"Are we all present? Yes, no…? Alright, we'll begin nonetheless. My name is Jason Gideon, many of you may know me already… "

So it went that every day, Jason and Spencer would sit together at the same table and play chess, occasionally making conversation with each other, the subject depending on the weather or the day or their moods. They would occasionally go days without speaking one word to each other, communicating rather in the strategy they used as they played chess. Spencer attended few lectures after this, however, after Tim didn't turn up for work the next day, and more than one guard was posted at the exit the following night. A few rare days did come to pass, though, where Jason would bring one of his unsolved case files to Spencer, in hopes that he would be able to help crack them.

The first file Jason brought was the Lyle-Brickston Case, seventeen years old, never solved, and held horrors that had many FBI and Syndicate agents puking in the restrooms and retiring when the case proved to be unsolvable. The FBI had had trouble catching the killer, and the Syndicate had had troubles recruiting him. Oddly enough, the killer was rather forthcoming to both agencies, informing them that he would reveal his victims' locations, any information they were willing to ask about, and himself (rather, his services, in The Syndicate's case), to whichever agency could happen to crack his codes and solve his riddles first. Asking a favor of one of his fellow lecturers, Jason received the case file and handed it to Spencer one day, with a small flame of hope that the youth may be able to make a break.

He not only cracked the case wide open, but also solved the code in record time, while playing Jason at chess with the mindset of the killer. The game had ended with Spencer in checkmate, because of his simple flaw of neglecting to move and consequently sacrifice his queen. Jason couldn't determine at first whether Spencer was playing in the mindset of the killer consciously or not, as the parallels were almost uncanny.

A pawn (A victim) was sacrificed (set free) in order to capture (kill) the opposing queen (the head case agent). The decision to not sacrifice his _own_ queen showed that whomever the killer had a special protective interest in had to be kept safe and not killed, under any circumstances. And it was well known in the criminal life that connections to lives that weren't your own meant possibilities for mistakes and mishaps; therefore, the killer's 'queen' had to be incredibly important to them. In the end, The Syndicate had found his queen in real life via stray love letters and had questioned her; after a while, she gave up the killer's whereabouts. Love was a dangerous thing, Spencer and Jason concluded.

It was difficult to keep the rumours down when Jason sent the solved case to his superiors, who immediately attempted to commend him for the achievement; Jason took the opportunity to assure them that it was, in fact, one of the criminals that they had deemed 'insane beyond repair or function' who had solved the case, and perhaps they should take a chance with the mentally unstable, instead of filing them away into a secure room and leaving them to rot. Naturally, his superiors were offended, resulting in a cut in Jason's leave time.

But his superiors didn't understand Jason's intentions - at least, not yet. They didn't understand that Jason would do everything in his power to get Spencer Reid out into the field, working cases with the main team of the organization, because the man was an invaluable asset they couldn't just lock away and forget about.

Because he was so adamant to integrate Spencer into the team, Jason began to train him, loaning him books on profiling, finding new ways to sneak him out to attend lectures, and taking cold cases out into the open for Spencer to solve. In the sanitarium, Jason often taught Spencer terminology, relating the words with moves on a chessboard. However, it eventually began to get awfully close to the end of Jason's leave, so he was hurriedly adding whatever he could to aid Spencer in his efforts. Not that he could do much more; the man already had three PhD's in Engineering, Mathematics, and Chemistry, and two BA's in Psychology and Sociology, and had almost been recruited into the FBI. But Jason still tested him on the information he had fed him, because he _needed_ this man out in the field with the team, and he needed the man to be _prepared_ to be out in the field with the team.

"Break down the Criminal government for me, with a description of each part," Jason began as he sat in his usual seat across from Spencer, with a chess board in-between the two. For the first time in roughly six months, Jason made the first move, sliding a pawn two spaces forward. Spencer stared at him oddly for a moment, but nodded soon after. His voice was a droning monotone for many, for he spoke as if his words were straight out of a textbook - and often, they were - but Jason seemed to hang on to every word, double-checking for any errors in information. And Spencer seemed all too enthused to offer any information about a topic he was familiar with, anyway.

"In line from the top of the Chain of Command, there is a man working under the pseudonym James Moriarty, an unknown criminal and the singular man that began the Criminal government; there are many rumours and myths about him, but not many have been revealed to be true. This conclusion, of course, has come from factoring in the very miniscule amount of myths that the man has debunked personally. He has an assistant, whom he entrusts the safety and function of all of the organizations, a woman we know best as Erin Strauss, though in retrospect, that may as well be a pseudonym, albeit a less prominent one.

"At that point, the government is split into many agencies and organizations, each one based off of an agency or organization of the Natural government, creating an opposite-mirror effect between both governments. There are currently dozens of Criminal equivalents to Natural ones, including Sagacity, the CIA's equivalent, Subversion, Homeland Security's equivalent, and Impunity, the FBI's equivalent.

"Each agency, be it Sagacity or Impunity, is broken up into dozens, occasionally even hundreds, of different organizations that are all competing against each other to become the best. _This_ organization, ingeniously christened 'The Syndicate', is currently at the top of the Impunity organizations, and has been for the last twenty years. It is _currently_ lead by Aaron Hotchner and Jason Gideon," Spencer inclined his head with a pause to acknowledge Jason's lengthy participation in the criminal organization - or perhaps to indicate his respect for the aforementioned. The genius shifted slightly in his chair and pushed one of his knights between two of his front-row pawns, steadying his breathing once more as he waited patiently for Jason to make his chess move and ask another testing question.

"Why does The Syndicate excel over other organizations under Impunity?" Jason asked next, and moved another pawn parallel to how he had before. The lack of praise from Jason was normal, and Spencer took the lack of any chastisement as a sign that he had answered correctly; if and only if Spencer exceeded expectations - which, with Jason, was difficult to do - would he get praise from the man. And that was the way Spencer preferred it.

"The methodology," Spencer immediately responded, moving one of his pawns to face Jason's pawn head-on. "The Syndicate focuses more on the _profiling_ of criminals in order to catch them and recruit or teach them, looking more for emotions expressed in evidence than for evidence, itself. The Syndicate is more of the equivalent of the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI than any other organization, resulting in, more often, a procession of record success."

"Hm. Taking that into consideration, how are people recruited onto the team?" Jason asked, taking out one of Spencer's pawns. Spencer was silent, hesitant, for a moment, before he began to explain.

"All recruitments are overseen by the heads of the organization, to be let into the official team, which goes out into the field and solves cases together, and catches criminals to recruit or exterminate, depending on the case. However, the men and women that are recruited have to have some prior knowledge of the way people work, whether by their mind, body, etc. In fact, it's been statistically proven that there's often a surplus of men, a ratio of about 73% of men to 25% of women that try to join these criminal organizations. One of the most popular theories is that men are mostly driven by the body rather than mind, wanting to join to beat other criminals than to get inside their heads - and they are always refused for that simple reason.

"The ultimate test of recruitment is the training process, as it takes into account the physical capabilities of the new team member in question. The new member is required to defeat - kill - every other Contender fighting to gain a spot on the team. Whomever arrives at the top of the championship is then contemplated by the entire team, and should any member refuse to have the champion on the team… they are sent away to an undisclosed location to be executed, for The Syndicate does not want any other organization to take a chance at criminals that they have deemed unworthy." Jason nodded, hesitating as Spencer took one of his pawns.

"Uh, that's what I'm," Spencer swallowed roughly, fighting to get the words out with his voice quivering, "What I'm a bit worried about, because, erm, you know, I'm typically not a social person, and my reputation - or lack of a sufficiently pride-worthy one - precedes me, and I'm just slightly worried that they won't accept me, perhaps because I'm nowhere near the standards of normalcy neither socially nor mentally… " He slowly drifted off, catching sight of Jason's raised eyebrows.

"Do I look anywhere near the 'standards of normalcy', socially or otherwise?" he asked, face stone-blank, and Spencer paused, then shakily smiled.

"Erm, no, sir," he responded meekly, and Jason gave a nod.

"Don't worry about it, kid, you'll do fine. The only things holding you back are your own insecurities and doubts," Jason noted, his words slowing as he moved another one of his pieces.

"And my insanity," Spencer added. "Eh - Not to forget my lack of appealing physical qualities."

"You look fine, Spencer," Jason huffed, exasperated. He hadn't thought Spencer to be one worried about outward appearance.

"Oh. I meant strength-wise."

"Hm… that won't be such a large hurdle to overcome," Jason replied, standing from his chair with his eyes still on the chessboard. "Like you said; most men get refused because they're focused too much on brawn than brain - which you are definitely exceeding in. As long as you can survive them in a fight, you'll do just fine." He then looked up at Spencer with a small smile. "Besides, completing the physical part of the testing isn't like running the hundred meter hurdle. It's just avoiding and killing. Checkmate."

Spencer, appalled, stared at the chess board and his inevitable defeat, then looked up with a dry look. "I appreciate the sentiment, but telling a physically incapable person that they'll do fine in their physical tests by using a _track_ analogy seems slightly redundant."

Jason's eyes crinkled. "You're not physically incapable, Spencer," he responded, lifting his arms in a 'so?' gesture. "Besides, all you have to do is kill a few people. And that shouldn't give you any trouble." He began to pick up his coat and his case file, almost about to say goodbye when Spencer mumbled something bitterly under his breath.

"One more time, I couldn't hear you," Jason said, his eyes narrowing from a gnawing suspicion growing in the back of his mind.

"I - " Spencer paused, his voice small and meek, and his eyes wide. He obviously hadn't meant for Jason to overhear him. Because of this, it was quite clear there wasn't any note of insincerity or mirth in his words. "It's nothing, don't worry about it, just - something stupid. It was a good game."

Jason frowned, sliding back into his chair and giving Spencer straight eye contact to give him a sense of importance and reassurance, even if the kid broke the contact straightaway. Spencer paused, blinking softly and slowly with a small shift in his chair, until Jason said in a lowered voice, "You're not stupid, Spencer. And you certainly don't say stupid things. What is it?"

"It… the problem isn't that I don't have the urge to kill.

"It's that I have it too often." He bowed his head, as if he had confessed a deep, deadly secret. He continued with his head still bowed, swallowing several times and avoiding Jason's gaze.

"These past few months you've wanted to know what makes me tick, why I kill, what factors my mental illness adds to the equation. You haven't said anything, but it's obvious from the way you look at me; like an enigma, an unsolved puzzle… broken." Here, Spencer did look up and meet Jason's gaze with supposed strength, though his voice still wavered slightly. "I don't kill because I want to; I just… have to," he finished lamely, suddenly refusing to blink lest it allow the dam to break behind his eyes and let tears stream down his face.

Jason nodded calmly, holding eye-contact and slowly putting his things back down beside the table, then proceeding to clasp his hands together out in front of him. "As is the case with many of us here _and_ out there," he stated coolly.

Spencer nodded, albeit in a much less stable way than Jason had, and swallowed once more; the tears at the edge of his vision threatening to spill over held their place. "After - after my stressor, I began to look at people at a different perspective. And I mean _look_ at them; my preconceptions about people and society and, really, humanity in general, had changed involuntary." A surge of sympathy and pity washed over Jason, seeming to paralyze him momentarily.

"I just don't want to be different anymore," Spencer whispered, and Jason nodded his head, eyes closed and hands clasped tightly in front of him, wondering what the kid ever did to deserve this. And why Jason himself didn't have the knowledge of how not to feel so helpless at times like these.

"I know, Spencer. I know."

* * *

Filling out the application for the placement on the team wasn't as time-consuming as Jason had thought it would be.

In fact, it had been relatively easy to fill out the newly printed papers that smelled suspiciously like chinese food - the closest printer Jason could find was directly by the cafe, was the older man's excuse, but Spencer didn't fully believe that for some odd reason; perhaps it was because Jason's bag also smelled faintly of chinese food, but Spencer didn't pursue the subject any farther than a simple notation - the hard part was getting Spencer's old files and tweaking them to fit the requirements of the applicable subjects for the team.

It had taken quite a few tries to persuade one of the tech guys to go digging for the files, but death threats coupled with the opportunity of owed favors from the criminal 'god' of The Syndicate were enough to sway anyone, no matter how relentless. And so Jason had gotten a hold of the file and had changed it in full view of Spencer, to make sure that the younger man memorized exactly what bits of his life were altered, erased, or added.

In the system, it takes roughly two weeks for each application to be submitted and checked to see if the applicant is applicable, but with a little more cashed in and promised future favors, Jason was able to kick up the schedule and get the application into a upper-ranking judge's hands in only a couple of days after the submission.

The Trials were held at the same time every year, beginning on the first day of Autumn and lasting all the way until the beginning of Winter. There were thousands of competitors that applied every year, but either weren't accepted due to too many applicants or because they weren't deemed worthy enough.

"There are three parts to the Trials," Jason had informed Spencer one day over their regular game of chess. "The first part is the intellectual testing. You will take a standardized test that will gauge your intelligence and ultimate use to the organization; this is the part you will no doubt pass with flying colours. The Contenders that get a score below an eight on the one through ten scaling are executed then and there in the room; any 'weaklings' that cannot handle the death and or gore are killed as well, so don't be surprised if you finish the test with a plethora of dead bodies surrounding you and the stench of blood smothering your nose. Though, of course, I would expect for you to finish before other Contenders, letting you leave and escape the other three hours of torture.

"The second part of the Trials is the physical testing. This will be the part that you will have the most trouble with, most likely. But, lucky for you, all that is required for you is that you must survive this test. All of the Contenders will fight to the death, and the last two standing are sent onto the next round; therefore, the easiest way to win is to escape any contact with others and ride it out until there are only three of you left. After that, you are going to have to kill the last Contender yourself, or find some way to pit the two against each other. Since there are so many Contenders each year, we've split them all up into three sectors. These sectors each have equal numbers of intelligent and unintelligent Contenders, determined by the intellectual testing. Only one champion will come out of each sector, but your sector will only be decided after your training time is over - which leads into the third part of the Trials.

"The third part is the overall testing. You will be brought in front of the higher-ranks that control the larger sectors of this organization, and possibly even the leader of Impunity herself. Once you get there, you will be asked various questions, and asked to demonstrate some things, intellectual, physical, you name it they could ask it. I once had a pupil that was only asked one simple question in the entire Trials, which was, 'Do you prefer oranges or apples as a mid-morning snack?'. He said apples, of course, as any sane person would, and was immediately killed on the spot - which is an excellent segue into my advice. Keep your manners close, and your abilities closer. The quickest route to getting in is being impressive and impressing the judges. If they ask a simple question, answer honestly but consider each possible motive for them asking the question, and answer carefully."

It was September 22, now, at roughly 11:50 p.m., with Jason gripping Spencer's shoulders with a vice-like grip and offering him good luck before pushing him towards the metal door in front of him, considerately labeled with a gold plaque that held a clear engraving of, 'Intellectual Trial Testing Room No. 4'.

Jason heaved a great sigh, and hoped with all of his soul that this one would make it. Spencer was… important to him. Had _become_ important to him, over the span of six months. And he would be damned if he was going to let anyone kill him before he was given a fair chance at this opportunity.

"Good luck, Spencer," he whispered to the genius' quivering back, making sure to keep his voice lowered so he wouldn't hear him. "You're going to need it."

* * *

Once the Contenders had completed the Intellectual Testing, they were allowed to leave the room; this Jason knew from the beginning and was repeating in a soft mantra under his breath as he paced the space outside the door to the testing room. A couple of people had already shuffled their way out of the room, and Jason was beginning to worry. He had expected Spencer to be the first one finished, with his reading ability and his intellectual prowess. Or, perhaps, he never finished because he couldn't handle the gore and death up close… no, that was ridiculous, why would he suddenly be squeamish to gore, when the genius himself had carved a portrait into a man's face? No, no, he wasn't twitchy around any type of carnage, and Jason knew that when Spencer was keeping his focus, he could hold such an objective point of view that Jason sometimes wondered if the empathy the genius showed on occasion was in reality a facade.

It wasn't until a couple more people shuffled out and it was three hours and thirty-seven minutes after the starting time of the test that Spencer finally walked out of the room with several papers and books under his arms, two pencils trapped in his hair and one pressed between his teeth. When he caught sight of Jason, he perked up slightly, and almost fumbled all he was carrying with a sparkle in his eyes. He spat the pencil out softly onto one of the books he was holding in his hands, and immediately began spewing words from his throat so quickly, Jason doubted for a second whether he was still speaking English or not.

Once he had gotten the genius relatively calm, Jason was finally able to ask how it went and why Spencer was so late coming out. While Spencer responded, Jason took to stealing one of the books from Spencer's hands and inspecting it. Advanced Criminology For Dummies, it read. Spencer took one look at the book and sneered slightly.

"That's actually for a guy I met in there. He was pretty nice, actually, sat right next to me and would always pick up my pencil when I would bump it off of my desk - I've never had enough time or hand strength to write continuously with one hand, so I taught myself to be ambidextrous, except when my hands get tired they tend to spaz, and I may or may not have sent a few pencils flying across the room."

He gave a quick glance at his watch. "Huh. I finished the test roughly thirty minutes in, but I didn't want to come back out, because the instructor was already sending me quite a few glares due to my hand-spazzing habits, so I walked up to her with my finished test and we actually had a rather pleasant conversation while she was grading my test, checking I had made at least an eight; it was quite an interesting conversation we had, actually, about the different stylistic techniques of famous past killers and how everyone's signature is unique, even if their signature is an exact replica of someone else's - " He took a breath and noticed Jason's half-exasperated, half-amused expression, with the last vestiges of worry fading from his face. "Er, yeah, it went alright. I was only wary of a few answers, mostly because they put a word limit on the questions, and I had to prioritize rather intensely, which came, much to my surprise, to be extremely difficult… "

Jason peered intently at the younger man's face as they began their trek back to the sanitarium, blocking out the genius' voice and listening instead to his body language. Jason had learned a long time ago that you could get much more information from looking than listening. Tongues can lie; body language rarely does.

Jason saw a lot of worry, but reassured himself that Spencer always seemed to be distantly worried in the back of his mind, and the stress of just having taken a test was enough to make it more perceivable. But also, in the slight pull of his cheeks, in the elevation of the back of his eyebrows, in the slight crinkle of his eyes, Jason could see a sense of triumphant accomplishment that gave the older criminal a sure sense of relief.

Spencer would be just fine.

* * *

"I see you're getting rather familiar with a certain man. New star pupil of the criminal 'god'?" Aaron Hotchner sent Jason a wry smirk from down the counter in the cafeteria; they usually met up every morning, one of them retrieving coffee from a coffee shop just down the street before coming in for both of them. It was a regular occurrence to see the two men lounging in the cafe, having daily casual conversation.

Currently, Aaron was pouring his own cup of coffee, not pausing to add anything to it nor blow on it to cool it down before he took a sip with a customary wince. Jason himself winced as well; he knew how bad the coffee was, and he also knew that Tuesdays were usually his days to get the coffee for them both. Sighing and scrubbing a hand down his face, he began his apology with an incredibly weary tone.

"I apologize, I forgot somewhere along the way, lost track of time."

"You look exhausted enough that it'd probably be more likely that you lost track of the _year_ ," Aaron huffed, pursing his lips slightly in concern as he looked Jason over. "You alright?"

Jason gave a faint nod, taking the coffee pot in front of him and pouring himself a mug, leaning over to the fridge to pop in and grab some creamer while Aaron watched, bemused. The usually stern agent took a sip from his own black coffee and remarked, "Wow. Creamer. Should I be concerned?" He paused for a moment. "This isn't about your new 'pupil', is it?"

Jason nodded once more, taking a gulp of his nine-parts-creamer-one-part-coffee and gagging slightly. Even with the processed caffeine it was still atrocious. "Isn't it always?"

Aaron gave a conceding shrug, leading them both away from the counter and to their regular table in the back. As they sat down, Aaron asked, "So, what separates this one from the rest?"

"Mm, see for yourself," Jason remarked, pulling out a file from his bag and passing it to the junior agent, who took it with relative enthusiasm. While Aaron entertained himself with the contents of Spencer Reid's personal file, Jason forced himself to take another gulp of his coffee and not spray it over the tabletop in disgust.

Once Aaron had finished, his coffee had been left on the table, put to the side and never picked up again. Jason felt it was safe to assume the beverage was cold by now, and he glanced down at the monstrosity in his own mug.

"That's … quite a handful. Are you going to vouch for him in the last Test?" Aaron inquired.

"I'll try to," Jason answered rather derisively, hearing Aaron's condescending undertone of, _You know what happened the last time._ "Though I doubt Erin will be rather enthusiastic about the notion of me having another favorite."

Aaron hummed his agreement. "You know, there've been rumours - only rumours, of course, and I know well enough not to depend solely on those - but some of the lower ranks have been talking about the Boston Butcher being a Contender."

Jason hesitated, narrowing his eyebrows in incredulity and sending Aaron a blank stare. "They're calling him the 'Boston Butcher'?"

"Obviously not the most creative name," Aaron nodded. He raised his eyebrows pointedly. "But I have a feeling they're not talking about the real Boston Butcher."

"What?" Jason spluttered. "You mean Derek Morgan is a Contender this year as well? I thought I had told him he should compete next year."

"He must have ignored you," Aaron said. "It's a large, repeated point in his file, his persistence and bullheadedness. It's a big potential strength, but also a big potential weakness."

Jason hummed absentmindedly, agreeing without knowing what he was agreeing with. He was lost too deep in his thought. He was pulled out rather quickly by Aaron once more.

"So tell me, before I forget to ask you and never find out: What's different about Spencer Reid?"

"You read the file, and you know he solved the Lyle-Brickston case," Jason input, and Aaron raised his eyebrows; they both knew what he meant. _What makes Spencer Reid any different to you than the other Contenders?_

"He's … misunderstood. But brilliant."

"And that, coming from you … "

"It's fascinating, Aaron, you should see it," Jason continued, ignoring Aaron's last comment. "I've actually got a couple of theories I'd like to run by you, if you don't mind." Without waiting for a response, he continued.

"Somehow he is able to suppress both his mental afflictions and his empathy at pure will, whenever he likes, leaving him a true killing machine," Jason marvelled, and Aaron leaned backward in his seat, taking a moment to envision it in his mind.

"Or, he's able to consciously change his mentality between a type three and type four assassin, minus the stalker components of the profile that aren't immediately present - I'm holding on to this theory merely because I haven't known him long enough to figure him completely out." Now, Aaron was beginning to look rather confused and impressed at the same time.

"My last theory is that he's able to speed up the serial killing process, somewhat alike to transitioning between the stages of grief in a matter of seconds, over and over in an endless cycle."

"That's … well, I won't say impossible. Are you close to figuring out which theory? How he's able to do it?" Aaron narrowed his eyebrows, attempting to think of a solution - or, more accurately, an _explanation_.

"Not yet," Jason responded rather dismally. "But I have no doubt that with a little training, it'll certainly come in handy out in the field."

Aaron nodded, then glanced at his watch and cleared his throat. "Right. I'm going now, checking in early to see about the Stevenson case my Section's working on. See you later."

Jason nodded, and gave a small grunt as his goodbye, while he took a last gulp of his coffee. He turned back around for a split moment when Aaron called out, "Oh - and don't forget to eat something; I don't want you getting sick today in the conference room, understand?"

Jason rolled his eyes, reaching across to the middle of the table for a stale breadstick while he contemplated the enigma that was Spencer Reid.

* * *

"What's going on? Gideon?"

Jason sighed heavily, not responding through the darkness immediately. Despite his best efforts, Spencer still refused to call him by his first name; and he still wouldn't give any explanation as to why.

He tried to keep his mind away from the thought that perhaps Spencer didn't want him to get too close, and rather held onto the thought that Spencer just wanted to show him the most respect he could in a casual way.

Shifting into a sitting position in his makeshift bed on the floor, Jason pushed himself against the back wall and squinted through the darkness to try and see Spencer. He could just spot his form by the opposite wall, curled with his knees against his chest and hands resting in-between.

Jason had made a curt promise to Spencer that he would spend a couple of nights with him - at least until the Trials were all completed. So Jason had made himself a makeshift cot near the back wall and perpendicular to Spencer's bed, which the cot rested at the foot of. Spencer had made an admittedly good argument for Jason to take the bed, but Jason had insisted that he had made his bed and he was going to lay in it. Literally.

Sleeping through he first night was uncomfortable, sure, but the concrete stone floor wasn't too far from the rock-hard mattresses that the organization supplied for the team, anyway. The only discomfort he really felt was when he was plucked from his sleep and gazed at the ceiling for what must have been ten minutes before he realized that there was a sound pulling at the tips of his ears.

It was a slow, high-pitched keening that echoed around the room, bouncing off of each wall and making it difficult to identify the source by the sound only. Waiting rather impatiently for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, Jason sat up and shuffled out of his cot, making his way through the dark room and finding the foot of the bed right beside him the hard way.

Rubbing his aching left hand - which had connected rather harshly with the metal pole of Spencer's (Jason's?) bed - with his right hand, Jason pulled the covers down and away from Spencer's form, which immediately curled into a skeletal mass of a shivering and sweating genius. Filing away for later use the obvious malnourishment that was sending alarms blaring through his mind, Jason winced at the covers soaked with sweat and reached up to place his hand on Spencer's forehead, to gauge his temperature.

Bringing back his hand with a discontented frown, the criminal shuffled down until he was on his knees and his toes, and then reached up to place a firm hand on the genius' shoulder. Immediately, it was caught in a vice-like grip, the owner of which gave an incredibly shaky breath and a soft, "Gideon?"

According to Spencer, the nightmares were frequent but not a hinderance; he had had them since he was a child, and eventually he came to know the voices in his dreams as the voices in his head that followed him wherever he went. The voices weren't always mean, just when Spencer defied their requests repeatedly, the genius informed him with a slight slur. Jason had commented on the slight fever he had felt as well; Spencer's response was a shrug and a downcast glance at the concrete floor.

"It's nothing unusual. I get intense migraines, on occasion, and right before or after I'll usually nurse a slight fever, especially if I'm unconscious," he had responded, and swallowed harshly. "Don't worry about me; go back to sleep. The guard outside knows I get up in the middle of the night, he won't mind me sneaking out to take a shower."

Jason had hesitated, but his body begged for him to go back to sleep, and his eyelids didn't seem to want to listen to anything Jason was thinking anyway, so he simply nodded and gave a simple, "Alright, then. Good night."

It became somewhat of a routine, with Jason waking up in the middle of the night to rescue Spencer from his nightmares, and then going back to sleep once the genius came back in after a midnight shower. He would close his eyes and pretend to sleep while Spencer was gone in the shower, but no matter how hard he would try, he would always only fall asleep when he could hear Spencer falling asleep in his own bed.

Oftentimes, Spencer was incredibly disoriented in his sleep, and once even clocked Jason across the jaw in an exceptionally bad nightmare. However, he would always awaken immediately at the sound of Jason's voice, suddenly alert and ready for action. This time, he seemed to be more out of it than usual, because when Jason answered his call with a soft, "We're in your bedroom, Spencer, there's two of us in here, and you were having a nightmare."

There was a pregnant pause, which Spencer filled with his raspy, unstable breathing. His words were rough on the throat and on the ears; he very obviously needed a drink, and Jason filed it away in his head to buy water bottles to keep inside Spencer's room just in case.

"I… what? Where… What kind of place is this?" Spencer asked, his tone less accusatory and more curious and horrified. His gaze was distant and glazed over, gliding around the room slowly, like a cloud drifting across the sky. He certainly had some clouds in his eyes, for when he looked up at the ceiling, his eyes traced something unseen, something moving. "What is that?"

Jason narrowed his eyes. Certainly _this_ wasn't normal for the genius. The criminal couldn't tell if Spencer was awake or not, but he still knew that he was entrapped in some sort of trance that would be hard to pull him out of.

"What is what, Spencer?" Jason tried, figuring that if the continuation of his voice didn't help matters, then perhaps using the genius' name more would trigger something.

"Don't… Can't you see it?" Spencer called in a wandering _sotto voce_ , slowly and steadily filling with worry and fear as his expression followed with a parallel condition. "It's not… "

"It's not _real_ , Spencer. You're dreaming. Whatever you're seeing is a figment of your mind, and is a result of your unconscious state," Jason pressed.

Spencer stared at him. "Are you real?" he suddenly asked, not his words nor his gaze distant or wondrous; in fact, they were both shatteringly sharp and clear, as if Spencer had been awake for a couple of hours before, drinking energy drinks blended with coffee. There was a clear sense of surety, that Spencer knew what was real and what wasn't, rendering his question redundant.

"Everything here is real, Spencer. Or, if not, nothing is," Jason intoned, and Spencer narrowed his eyes, unfurling from his fetal position and reaching out with one hand, as if it could break through the material of Jason's pajamas and cause his being to dissolve around his hand, like a living hand through an apparition.

Jason continued, "Maybe… nothing is real? Then, our bond together is not real. That must be a comfort for you, seeing how much you desperately despise the idea of me getting close to you. I just want to be your friend, Spencer, just a friend… why won't you let me in?"

Spencer's hand made contact with Jason's shoulder and suddenly it wasn't his shoulder anymore, but a doorknob, with Jason on the other side of the glass door, his face morphing into a darkened monstrosity with blood pouring in streams from the edges of the shadows that cast figures onto his darkened face, which currently held an expression of pure loathing as his hands hit the door with such force that the crack that emanated from the glass echoed through the wells of Spencer's mind several times before dissipating completely. The cracks in the glass were getting wider and wider, the manic grin now on Jason's face getting wider as well, and water was pouring from the cracks in the glass, and darkness flowed in quick and sloppy spurts out of Jason's mouth, his fists uncurling and turning into spread palms, pushing against the door with all of his might, and Spencer knew now that there was no way to keep him from getting inside, he was too far in, all Spencer could do now was run, _run,_ _ **run**_ _,_ hoping he doesn't catch up as he hears the glass shatter behind him, and he feels the hand on his shoulder, dragging him down as he turns around to see - no, not Jason, it's not Jason anymore, it's morphed into - into _him_ \- and Not-Spencer drags Spencer to the ground and he falls _and falls and_ _ **falls**_ _-_

He falls down onto his bed, and the vertigo that follows his quick bend into a sitting position is nothing close to the understatement that is 'disoriented'. He feels the bile rise in this throat, but immediately dispels it with a harsh swallow as he ignores the burning in his mouth and throat, concentrating on Jason's grounding voice, offering several platitudes, "You're awake now, it was just a nightmare, we're in your bedroom, it is 3:35 in the morning, and you're awake now."

After calming his breathing enough to stop the gasping breaths he didn't even know he was taking, Spencer managed to choke out, "Is this real?"

Jason smiled softly, handing the genius a plastic cup of water from the sink. Spencer took the cup, remembering that Jason wouldn't've needed to buy water bottles, because there was a sink in Spencer's bedroom. He should have known it was a dream. That coupled with the fact that in the nightmare - Jason didn't tell Spencer the time…

"I should hope it's real," Jason chuckled. "Otherwise I paid far too much for this makeshift cot of overpriced blankets." He gestured to the pile of blankets and pillows that acted as his bed, and Spencer gave a small smile, bringing the cup tenderly up to his mouth to take a small sip. The relief was instant and unimaginable to his burning throat.

"… Gideon?" Spencer asked a moment later, his voice meek and small.

"Yes?" came the response, short and distracted, as was Jason's usual way. The elder criminal was making his way back to his cot and was fixing it back up to sleep in again. "What is it?"

"I… are we friends?"

Spencer could see Jason pause in his bed-making, then pull the covers over himself with a small huff. "I'm here to teach you, not be your friend."

Spencer swallowed, and allowed himself a wary, fearful smile. "It's nice to have friends." It was a statement, but his inflection somehow morphed it into something of a question. Jason paused, slightly unnerved that the kid had seen right through his words.

"Indeed it is, Spencer," Jason replied, turning in his bed to face away from Spencer. "Good night."

Spencer paused, swallowing again to fight the burning behind his eyes, as he stood to walk to the door to sneak out and take his usual shower. "Good night, Gideon."

They both knew Jason fell asleep only when Spencer had lain himself back down in his bed again with a soft, assured smile. He knew he was safe. He had a friend. It was a new experience, a new feeling.

It was… nice.

* * *

"Physical Prowess."

"Not your strong point."

"Not my strong point."

Jason chuckled softly, blinking slowly and peering at the other Contenders warming up around them. "You'll do just fine."

Spencer shot him an incredibly incredulous glance as he pointed with his gaze across the training room to a man who was currently facing off against two other men, one of which was momentarily thrown through the closest wall and the other suffering a crushed skull from the first man's foot. Jason blinked once, twice, then said, "Just remember; he can't throw you or crush you if he's not close enough.

"For you, this is more of a test of evasion than of strength. As long as you can escape the stronger people's wrath, you will be able to survive," Jason assured him, but Spencer didn't feel very relieved.

As far as he was concerned, this was about to turn into a bloodbath incredibly quick, and he was going to be the eye of the storm, with chaos all around him until it dissipated and he was left to fend for himself against the strongest Contender.

It was a whole three hours that the Contenders had of free time in the training room to practice; killing was forbidden, but there were no strict rules about injuring. Spencer was sure the only reason that the buff man he had seen in the beginning wasn't killed or dragged out of the room was because both of the men that he had pummeled had crawled together afterwards, into their own corner, no doubt conspiring against the man that had beaten them both.

Spencer didn't much understand the rules, at first. Why put all of the Contenders together, with the allowance of crippling each other, before they start the official fighting? Why not start the fighting right then and there? In fact, why let the Contenders warm up, anyway? Wouldn't it be more beneficial for them to start right when they've woken up, to test their ability to examine a situation quickly and efficiently?

But then again, wasn't this what that was? Grouping all of the Contenders together, simply so that they could get a feel for each other? It was another intelligence test, Spencer realized. One of a very different kind. The intelligent ones would scan the crowd of Contenders, and learn which ones to stay away from, possibly overhear the plans of some in order to sabotage them, and most important of all, to find weaknesses in everyone. This was a hands-on test, in analyzation. The goal was not just to survive; it was to survive using a strategy, instead of luck. The person with the best strategy wins.

And suddenly, the open and unknown battlefield that was the training room became an easily dominatable chess board in Spencer's mind. That is, until he realized that it fit a little too well and didn't have to imagine the illusion.

The weaker training machines were set in two rows on opposite sides of the room, behind which stood the harder machines; in front of both of these rows was a large open space, which Spencer walked straight in the middle of to get a better perspective as he turned and analyzed each point in the room with new eyes.

The entire room was a literal chess board. The pawns were the first two front rows on the opposite sides of the room, the back two holding the stronger pieces. All Spencer had to do was play.

Play he would.

A small smile growing on his face, Spencer almost took off to find the nearest pawn in order to analyze the weakness of whoever was there; however, he was halted rather quickly by a hand clasping strongly on his shoulder.

"Jason, is this what I think it - " Spencer began, too excited to pay any attention to the formality he usually gave the criminal, as he called him by his first name. Or, he would have called him by his first name, if it had been Jason that was behind him. Instead, in his place, was a rather tall man with biceps that must have been as wide as Spencer's face.

"Your friend left," his booming, commanding voice rang out in the room, and soon almost all activity around the room had halted. Spencer momentarily wondered why, but was soon distracted from finding that answer. "And I'm figuring that he's not coming back." The hand tightened on his shoulder, to a very painful grasp that Spencer was sure would dislocate the joint if it were compressed any harder.

"Y'see," the man continued, leaning in forward and bending slightly until he was face-level with Spencer, then proceeding to shoot his other hand out and take hold of the genius' throat. Suddenly finding himself with a distinct lack of air, Spencer struggled and clawed at the fist around his neck, to no avail. "I see it like this: if I take out the shrimps now, I won't have to worry a thing about them in the ring, y'hear?"

Spencer gave a hurried nod, and strongly resisted the urge to listen to his instincts, which were currently pointing out the exact pressure points he would have to deliver singular, swift jabs to in order to leave this man unable to pick up his legs and walk, for the rest of his life. If he gave any advantage over this man, all he would get in return would be more dominant personalities swarming him and the element of surprise burned from his arsenal. So he simply continued clawing at the hand at this throat and on his shoulder, hoping against hope that the man would loosen his grip just for a moment so Spencer could make a break for it.

The grip did loosen slightly from some external source, a few moments after Spencer began to see spots floating lazily across his vision, but the grips also held steady enough to bring Spencer with them as they were propelled sideways. Damning his self-control, he let his instincts take over so that he wouldn't be brought down with his hulk of a man, and in a matter of seconds, Spencer's hands had folded and brought themselves directly into the crick of the man's left elbow, rendering the man's hand limp and unusable.

Spencer planted his feet in the ground, making sure to keep himself upright as he rubbed the area around his trachea with his hands turning in endless, soothing circles. He coughed a few times, and put one hand on his knee as he bent down to take deep breaths. He peered upward at his supposed savior, and a warm spark of familiarity shot through his chest as he remembered where he had seen the man before.

"Hey, man, you alright?" It was the man that had helped him during the test, devoting his own time to helping Spencer pick up his stray pencils. He turned to the crowd. "Alright, scatter, nothing to see here. Move along."

As everyone began to dissipate and return to what they had been doing a few moments before, the man caught the eye of one scrawny girl that had stayed behind, and he stared her down resolutely. "I said _go_." She left.

The man turned back to Spencer, and the genius immediately raked his eyes up and down the man's form, making sure to scout for any possible weaknesses. The man may be a friend, but there was still a chance that they would be placed in the same sector, and would most likely have to kill each other.

He was young, probably late twenties or early thirties, with skin too tan for him to be fully caucasian. He held a bit of stubble on his chin, the only hair standing out prominently against his skin at his sideburns, which lead up into a full head of oily, onyx-colored hair that swelled upward at the tip by the forehead, seeming to defy gravity. His facial features were rather pleasing to gaze at, and his smile seemed wider than seemed physically possible when he moved forward and offered a hand for Spencer to shake. He did. The man's eyes were a sincere light blue-green, and Spencer momentarily lost himself, entertained far too much by listing the most words for the color that he could think of. Verdigris seemed most fitting. Spencer was snapped out of his mental ramblings by the man's voice, holding a low and rumbling bassist's timbre.

"Hey. I'm Stephen. You're - uh - you're Spencer, right? I heard some of the higher-ups talking about you on the way over here." He paused for a moment, revelation dawning on his handsome face as he took a step back, regarding Spencer from a longer distance. "I know you… you were the guy that kept dropping his pencils in Testing Room four, right?"

Spencer, rather awkwardly, blushed and attempted to cover it with an awkward, self-deprecating huff. "Uh, yeah, yeah, that was me." There was a terse moment, in which Spencer cleared his throat several times, and Stephen glanced around the room. He opened his mouth to say something, but Spencer had already began talking, and immediately regretted it. "Thanks for, uh, y'know."

Stephen gave a soft smile. "Yeah, no problem. Hey, would you mind doing me a favor?"

Spencer blinked, nodding and returning a shy smile. "Of course not. You've already done enough to put me in debt. Just give the word."

Stephen glanced around for a moment, lowering his voice out of earshot for any eavesdroppers, and pursing his lips while moving closer to Spencer in order to let him hear. "I'm pretty sure there's a trick to all of this - this whole 'training time' thing. I mean, it's common sense. Why on earth would you put all of us in a room where we can mostly kill a person? It kind of defeats the purpose of having us all fight each other officially, right?"

Spencer hesitated for a moment, still slightly wary of the man - what if they would have to kill each other? - but then took a deep breath and decided that even if they were going to be pitted against each other, it wouldn't hurt to help Stephen out - he had already helped Spencer out, already. Besides, if Stephen had passed the intellectual testing already, he was probably smart enough to figure it out by himself eventually. A small smile found its way onto Spencer's face, as he whispered conspiratorially, "You want to know what I know?"

"Definitely," Stephen smiled back, his expression not at all fervered or predatory, which Spencer found immensely comforting. The genius pointed over at one of the nearest rows.

"You see that entire row, right there?" When Stephen nodded, Spencer continued. "Those are the pawns. The row behind it? Those are the rest of the chess pieces: the rooks at the ends, the knights beside them, bishops nearest the king and queen, and the king and queen themselves. You see, each of the work-out machines are centered around difficulty; the pawns' machines are the least difficult, and the king and queen's machines' are the most difficult. We'll find the strong people on the machines, their strength level ranging depending on their placement if they're nearer or further from the king and queen, and we can find the smartest people on the sidelines, taking note of everyone, their weaknesses, their strengths, and forming a plan based on all of that."

At this point, Stephen was gaping, looking around the room and taking in this revelation. A soft, "wow," escaped his lips, but other than that, he let out no other verbal indication of his amazement. Spencer quivered momentarily in excitement, until an idea hit him. He cleared his throat, and Stephen glanced back at him.

"Y'know this room is kind of big, and if I'm going to analyze the big jocks up at the back walls, it'd be best if I didn't go alone, and since we're both going to be analyzing everyone - because you're obviously intelligent - not that I didn't think that before, it's just that now I've told you what the most intelligent people would do, and you seem inclined to do it - and I'm sure you would have come up with it on your own, eventually - not to say that it would take you more time than it would most other people - "

"If you're asking me to come with you to figure out everyone's weakness, you're not doing a very good job of it," Stephen informed him with a raised eyebrow and an irritated expression. It soon melted into one of amusement, however, and Spencer breathed a long sigh of relief when Stephen followed with, "Of course I'll come with you; I don't want to miss out on any new ideas you may come up with." He gave Spencer a soft smile, and gestured towards the pawn. "Lead the way, O intelligent one."

Spencer's subsequent laugh set a smile on both of their faces, and the genius began his trek to the pawn row, Stephen trailing close behind.

* * *

"Slight weakness in right clavicle as well as a fractured forearm; he was thrown against the wall earlier, when I just walked in here," Spencer rattled off in an undertone as they passed a man leaning against the wall, cradling his arm to his chest. Beside him, Stephen paused.

"Speaking of when you came in here," he began, and Spencer halted as well, looking back inquiringly. Stephen cleared his throat and continued in a slightly less stable manner. "You were with a man - mid-fifties or so, balding, kind of Teddy Bear complexion - was he… was he Jason Gideon?"

Spencer tilted his head sideways, swallowing. "Well, yes. But I'm not supposed to tell anyone that I know him personally. Why do you ask?"

Stephen nodded slowly, his gaze glued to his shoes. "Well, he's certainly changed," he said, a hand coming up to rub the back of his neck, seemingly instinctively. "I - uh - I guess I kind of owe it to you, for being so kind to me and helping me out… My _full_ name is Stephen Gideon. Jason Gideon is my dad. And I haven't really seen him in a decade or so."

Spencer almost - almost - reeled backward, but managed to contain himself and settled for a surprised flinch. "Hold on - _you're_ Stephen? Er… Wow. Sorry, I just imagined you a bit differently." Spencer shook his head, clearing his mind of the shock and brushing off the plethora of questions he had. "Anyway, I can assure you he's a good man. Dedicated, studious - not to mention he talks about you all the time. Says you're the best thing that ever happened to him and he messed everything up when he left you."

Stephen, for his part, didn't seem too surprised, instead swallowing several times and looking as if he was having trouble accepting this perspective. "Yeah," he eventually spoke. "I guess I shouldn't really be judging him when I don't know him anymore, right?"

Spencer smiled with a nod, until he seemed to realize something, and the smile fell to a frown. "Have… have you told him that you're applying for a place here?"

Stephen burst out laughing, a rueful, doleful laugh that made Spencer a bit uncomfortable. "No, he doesn't know I'm here. I… well, I was going to wait until I saw him in the final test, to surprise him." He was suddenly incredibly vehement, reaching forward and stopping himself from grabbing Spencer's shoulders. "Please, Spencer, don't tell him I'm here. He'll come looking for me, and regardless of the surprise… I don't think I'm quite ready for that yet."

Spencer grimaced, chewed his lip, bordering on indecision. Stephen began to plead, begging, "Please, Spencer, you can't tell him, you can't. I'll do anything. Please."

"I won't tell him - but only because you asked. You saved my life, so I guess we can consider ourselves even?" Spencer suggested with a frightened hesitance. At once, Stephen's face broke into a smile and he spewed the most intricate show of gratitude using words that had Spencer rather impressed.

Spencer brushed off his gratitude with a genuine, "It's the least I could do."

"No, it's not. I'm a bit terrified of what he'll think, even more terrified of rejection. Y'know. Again. But I don't know. It feels different than when he left," Stephen said, his voice lowering with each word.

"You have nothing to worry about," Spencer assured him with a soft smile. "If there's one thing I know for sure about Gideon, it's that he really, truly does love you."

Stephen looked up and smiled quite possibly the brightest smile Spencer had ever seen in his lifetime. "Thank you, Spencer. I don't know where I'd be without you."

Spencer laughed. "Lost. Definitely lost."

"Hey, I'm not that incompetent! Besides, I'll have you know that I have a very acute sense of direction, thank you very much. Of course, we didn't even really know until that one camping trip to dad's personal cabin when we went out, got chased by a bear, lost most of our clothes wading through a river, and couldn't find civilization for three days." Spencer and Stephen continued, talking all the way about Stephen's supposed escapade in the wild wilderness with his father. Spencer was having so much fun, it didn't even occur to him that Jason never let anyone into his cabin, ever.

He was too busy laughing at the prospect of Jason running from a Grizzly bear through a rushing current. The imagined panicked expression was enough to send Spencer doubling over at the mere thought.

* * *

By the end of the three hour mark, Spencer and Stephen had deduced the strengths and weaknesses of each person inside the room, and were tucked away in a corner, putting faces to names and names to stats. Spencer had already memorized all of them on the spot, and was testing Stephen on them when the three hour mark came and passed.

Unfortunately, it passed quite prominently, with a loud blaring siren and flashing lights that blinded whomever kept their eyes open. It only lasted for what must have been thirty seconds, but it felt like an eternity to Spencer.

Loud noises and flashing colors were not much his thing. Permanent disorientation was a rather large fear of his, one that he dealt with temporarily, night after night when he awoke from nightmares; it was only one of his fears he still hadn't gotten used to.

Once the alarm had finished its rampage on the Contenders' senses, it halted, and the training room doors opened to reveal a rather bored-looking man in his mid-forties, dressed in a smudge-free suit and holding a clipboard in one of his hands, a pen in the other.

With no introduction of himself, or even a pause to wait until the soft murmuring of the crowd had ceased, he began swiftly and suddenly, with such a penetrating voice that Spencer almost preferred the siren to the sound. "A., Jonathan, H. Sector One. A., Jackson, L. Sector Three. C., Sarah, P. Sector Two. D., Paul… "

The list seemed to take ages, and soon the crowd began to shuffle into three groups, as if they had been instructed to do so earlier. Spencer was absolutely sure they had been given no instruction, and were merely checking out the people that they had been assigned to kill. Eventually, they came to Stephen and Spencer's names.

"… Two. R., Spencer, W. Sector Three. R., Kate, D.… " Spencer didn't move until Stephen's name was called, not wanting to leave the man alone and not wanting the man to leave him alone. However, he ignored the man when he asked, "W? What does that stand for? Is it Wadkins? Ooh, I bet it's Wadkins. Look - you're blushing! It's definitely Wadkins."

"It's not Wadkins, what kind of middle name is Wadkins?… It's Walter, alright?"

Stephen was silent for the rest of the name-listing, though Spencer could see in his peripheral when he mouthed 'Walter' and his shoulders shook slightly from laughter. It wasn't too long before Stephen's name was called, however.

"… One. G., Stephen, J. Sector Three. V, Jack, D.… "

Stephen had stopped laughing. They were in the same Sector. They would have to kill each other.

Spencer, for some reason, found his throat rather closed up and a burning sensation at the back of his eyes. _Damnit_ , he had _never_ meant to make friends - it was precisely the thing he aimed to _not_ do, seeing as either he or they would end up dead at the very end, anyway. Stephen, however, chose to took the bright outlook on things, as he patted Spencer on the shoulder; the genius tried very hard not to flinch at the touch. The only person he had allowed any physical contact since… well, _ever_ , really, was Jason, and that man had, more realistically, _forced_ his way into that privilege with time. But now Stephen's hand was resting on Spencer's shoulder, and he would have to deal with it.

He knew that there was pain to come, after this, when this was all over. One of them was going to die. Even if they both came out on top, one of them would be deemed better, and they would continue to the final round of pickings between the champions of the three sectors. So, in an effort to dull the pain, Spencer steeled himself and shoved Stephen's hand off of his shoulder, walking away briskly straight into the mass of people that had gathered, which was the Sector Three group.

Getting lost among the mass of Contenders, Spencer was sure Stephen wouldn't be able to find him. It only took the bewildered man roughly five minutes to find Spencer again, at which time he was shoving his way through all the people.

"Spencer!" he called out, and Spencer - much to his own surprise as well - froze, with his back still turned to Stephen, and consequently ran into a man in front of him. The man was rather tall - African American, with impressive muscles that Spencer got a look of for only a moment before the guy yelped, "Hey, Pretty Boy, watch where you're going!"

Muttering a small apology, Spencer turned to his left and attempted to squeeze past more people, but found his pathway blocked by two more people that didn't much look like they wanted to be bothered. He was stuck.

"Spencer," Stephen repeated, panting and catching his breath as he caught up to the genius. When he was finally close enough to turn Spencer around and did, he was rather surprised to find tear tracks streaming down his face. He heaved a large sigh, and bent down, looking the genius in the eyes.

"Hey, c'mon, now, do you really think _this_ is the way to win? No - don't interrupt, _listen_. I heard from some other people that if you're good enough, one of the team members could accept you into their Sector, if you're in the finals. _We can survive._ "

Spencer paused in the face of this revelation, and took a moment to clear his throat and wipe the tears from his face. "You - " he cleared his throat once more, trying to hide the raspiness of it. "You're suggesting that we work together and we both might survive?"

" _Yes,_ " Stephen intoned, putting his hands on Spencer's shoulders and lifting them immediately when Spencer tensed uncomfortably underneath. "I mean, obviously, the team members will only choose who they think is the best Contender out of all of us, and I'm confident that if they don't choose you to join the team, then you'll be chosen by a team member to work in their Sector, but - the point I'm trying to make is that I'm sure I can persuade one of the members to let me join - and then neither of us will have to die."

Spencer swallowed, calculating the risks and turning them over and over in his head. "That's a big risk, there. Simplifying it down, you've got four other Contenders that you may not even know that could be more impressive than the both of us put together, that could take both of those spots and leave us both to die. And that's assuming that we can even both survive Sector Three."

He looked up into Stephen's eyes, determination sparking a cold fire in them. "But at the same time, if I strategize with someone much stronger than me, and you strategize with someone like me, we could greatly increase our chances of getting into the very top finals."

"Does that mean you're in?" Stephen pressed, pleading for a final answer.

Spencer hesitated once more, then nodded. "I'm in."

* * *

As it turns out, the actual official fighting wouldn't take place in any set arena. The entire _facility_ was cordoned off and split into three portions for each of the three sectors. There were stairs and elevators and rooms that one could hide in, but each of the sectors had to stay in their assigned area of the facility. In order to let the Contenders know the boundaries, each person was given an electronic bracelet, that send a small shock into said Contender's hand whenever a boundary was near; the nearer one would get to a boundary, the higher the voltage of the shock. However, just to make it more interesting, the bracelets would activate as well whenever one was near another Contender. This made close combat difficult, but bearable, and weakened the Contenders so that they wouldn't be at full strength.

As the bored man in the sharp suit said, "It saves us plenty of time if you are weakened. You kill each other off faster, and there's not so much of a hassle."

"How considerate," Stephen had commented, and Spencer had huffed a small laugh that cheered him up rather nicely.

But now was not the time for emotions. He and Stephen had set up a nice strategy, one that kept both of them alive and well until the end. As long as Stephen followed the plan as well, everything would be alright. Sector Three was the last sector to be placed inside their part of the facility; that was where the problem came in. There was no way for Spencer or Stephen to give the other their location of where they were; and it was pertinent that they were both together, for the strategy to work.

That was why, when the starting alarm sounded, Spencer first went for a knife instead of a gun or something easier and deadlier. There was a plethora of people at the weapons table, and Spencer knew that if he didn't get out of there fast, he probably wouldn't get out of there alive. So he took the knife and sprinted as fast as he could without tripping away from the table, and down the hallways, making a very winding and confusing path. Once the had turned a corner and was sure that no one had followed him or was around, he took the knife and held up his hand, squeezing his eyes shut as he dragged the metal deep across his skin, making an incision deep enough that there was a surplus of blood running down his arm.

Not wanting to waste any blood and risk growing faint, Spencer instantly set to work, looking up and drawing an arrow on the ceiling, pointing down the hall on his right. When he had finished, he sprinted down that hall as well, skipping three crossroads, and when he came to the fourth one, he drew an arrow pointing left and took a left turn. He continued this until he began to see a familiar hallway - this was Jason's Section. Oftentimes, Spencer would go and attend Jason's lectures - always held in his lecture room, in his Section. Jason had apparently pulled some strings this time to get Sector Three to leak into his Section, and for that, Spencer was immensely grateful. He knew this terrain, now, and he knew exactly where to find what he was looking for.

… _207… 208… 209…_ Room 210. Drawing an arrow on the ceiling pointing into the room, Spencer barged in, quite surprised to find a woman already in the room, standing over a man's body that held a rather noticeable hole in the forehead, where the bullet from the woman's gun had no doubt killed him. Spencer looked up at the girl, eyes wide like a deer in the headlights, adrenaline tingling his fingertips and toes as the realization dawned on her that there was someone else in the room, and she pointed the gun straight at him, firing wildly.

It was obvious, the way she held the gun and recoiled at the kickback every time the gun fired, that she wasn't professionally trained to use a gun; however, professional or not, she did know how to fire it, and that put Spencer in immediate danger. Using his knowledge to his advantage, Spencer bolted from his position and dropped to the ground, pausing momentarily to ready his muscles before throwing the knife expertly, the blade slicing straight through the skin on woman's forearm before turning and lodging between the woman's ulna and radius. She dropped the gun and _screamed_ , a harsh noise that grated on Spencer's ears; but the genius was more worried about the noise attracting other people that he knew he wouldn't be able to fend off while he was incapacitating this woman.

Spencer made a dive for the gun, and delivered a quick, mercy shot to her forehead; one alike to what she had given to the man on the floor just minutes before. She crumpled to the floor, dead, and Spencer swallowed, quickly checking the ammo in the gun - seven bullets left, definitely enough for any unwanted intruders - and flicking the safety back on, before placing it in the back of his pants for safekeeping. He paused, staring at his stinging, bleeding hand, and bent down, unwrapping a scarf from around the woman's neck and winding it around his cut - that is, until he realized that most of the pain was emanating from the bracelet on his wrist. Remembering the 'efficiency', Spencer paused for a moment, putting two fingers on the woman's wrist and feeling her heartbeat slowly stop. Once it did, Spencer found that he couldn't feel the tingling in his wrist anymore. He stood shakily, stepping over both the woman - grabbing the knife out of her arm in the process - and the body of the man that she had killed.

Spencer glanced up to the ceiling. He looked back down, around the room, and, upon seeing a few chairs situated at a table nearby, shuffled one of the chairs closer to the corner, shaking it to test its stability before standing on top of it and reaching up with the knife in-hand. A small vent was blowing vaguely cool air onto Spencer's face, and he let it keep him alert while he took the knife and began to twist it along with the screws on the edges of the vent.

Once all of the screws had come loose, the vent came off easily, and Spencer pulled it off, setting it down softly onto the floor. He took a deep breath, then threw the knife up into the ventilation shaft, and used the wall to try and scale upward, finally pulling himself up after a minute or two.

Once he was up safely, he stood completely still for what seemed like an eternity, but what was probably only something like five minutes. And then, out of nowhere, making him jolt in surprise, a few quick knocks were heard, emanating from the door outside. Recognizing the knock, Spencer sighed in relief and peeked his head through the ceiling, his hair falling in front of his face as he called out, "It's safe; come in."

The door slowly opened, creaking slightly as Stephen entered, taking in the scene with wide eyes. "What… happened?" he managed, and Spencer gave an irritated huff, not wanting to dwell on his first kill in this Trial.

"Shut the door," he hissed instead in reply, and Stephen glanced up at the vent and where Spencer was peeking from inside. Stephen nodded briskly, walking the singular pace backwards to shut and lock the door. Spencer continued. "Do you have the knife?"

"Yep, and the gun. Judging by the arrow marks, I'm assuming you got the other knife?"

"We got lucky," Spencer swallowed, his grim voice echoing eerily through the hollow vent. "Are you working down there?"

"Yeah, now hush. This takes concentration." Spencer did as he was told, and began his trek through the vents, crawling on his hands and knees to the nearest open vent he could see. He paused for a moment, then knocked twice on the bottom of the vent.

"You're still in the room," Stephen informed him distractedly. He was obviously still working. "Take a right and it should be on your immediate left."

Once more, Spencer followed Stephen's directions, and found another vent. He knocked twice, and Stephen called out, "Good to go. Now give me two minutes; this is going to be harder than I thought."

Spencer swallowed, and knocked twice. Two for yes, Three for no, and One for someone's coming. Spencer counted the painstakingly long minutes, until he had reached five minutes, at which time, he called out through the vent in a rather loud voice, "Just shoot it!"

"Shut up!" Stephen hissed, then paused, obviously taking a moment to consider Spencer's idea. Spencer heard a faint sight. "Fine. But if we get caught because of it, I'm killing you on the spot."

"If we get caught, you'll be dead before you could get into the vents," Spencer muttered under his breath, despite the fact that he knew Stephen wouldn't be able to hear him anyway.

Then, suddenly, a singular shot rang out, and Spencer jumped, startled. The vent creaked ominously, but did not break under his weight. Spencer knocked four times. They hadn't come up with anything for Four, but Spencer was sure by the tonality of the knocks that Stephen could derive the meaning: _What the hell?_

"Calm down, I just did as you said. Meaning we didn't even need the knife. What a waste." Spencer rolled his eyes.

The plan at first was simple. Spencer had to find a room with an air vent and crawl inside. That way, he could spy on anyone walking directly outside the room, and warn Stephen whenever someone was coming so that he could shoot them through the peephole as they passed by. After the person was dead, Stephen would take the corpse and drag it into the room so no one would suspect anything as they walked down the hall. However, there was one flaw in the plan.

The peephole was too small to fit the barrel of a gun into. The original plan was to carve the peephole larger with a knife, so that the barrel would fit, and the person outside could be shot at average-height eye-level. But, as they did not have much time to prepare, and the knife-thing was taking too long, Stephen just had to shoot the door, without giving Spencer any warning. No warning at all. None. And that was absolutely necessary. It wasn't like Stephen could have given Spencer any kind of fair warning.

Spencer's exasperation dissipated almost instantaneously, however, when he caught sight of a mess of hair turning the corner. Swallowing, Spencer knocked once, loud and clear. As expected, the person kept on walking, not alerted of Spencer's presence. Now it was Stephen's turn. Just a few more steps, and he'd be at the door. Just a few more… _there - !_

 _Bang!_ The man at the door crumpled to the ground, and Spencer caught sight of the bloody hole in his forehead just before he fell face-down onto the concrete floor. The man was dead, and Stephen immediately went into action, opening the door just a crack and dragging the body inside; after it was in, he shut and locked the door once more, giving a responding singular knock on the door as a formality.

"Nice job, Spencer. This might actually work." Spencer huffed in irritation, as he was sure it would work from the beginning - it was mostly his plan, after all - but his irritation was miniscule compared to the joy and hope that overwhelmed him at the moment. The plan had worked. The rest of the plan may just work as well. They may both survive after all…

Another person. Spencer knocked. The person passed. Stephen shot, and took the body. Closed the door. This repeated several times, until Stephen checked his ammo. "Hey, Spencer! I've only got two more bullets. We'll have to venture out for more, soon."

Ah, _damn._ Wait. No. Spencer took a deep breath, and yelled, "Check the dead woman!"

Spencer sighed, slamming his head down onto the side of the ventilation shaft repeatedly when Stephen replied, "Which one?"

Spencer paused, not wanting to give up his cover, and figured that Stephen would figure it out. Apparently he did, because a few moments later, he called, "Wow. You were right - there was a bag on her full of ammo; there's got to be at least twenty rounds in here. Nice work!"

Spencer responded with another singular knock, indicating another person was coming by. After a while, the rate at which people entered the hallway slowed. Some people had come in groups, and now it was dwindling out into consistent single digits. No one in any of the Sectors had been forewarned about the number of people in each Sector, but Spencer was beginning to think that there couldn't be many more. As if the people watching could read Spencer's mind, a few minutes later there was a loud ping, followed by a man's voice.

"Announcement. Sector One: Five Contenders. Sector Two: Six Contenders. Sector Three: Four Contenders." The announcement was apparently over, because nothing more came from the speakers that Spencer had never even noticed before now.

"Y'hear that, Spencer? Only two left!"

Stephen's voice was excited. Ecstatic, even. But something about it was… off. Spencer shifted, realizing that his legs had fallen asleep, and he winced at the pins and needles that hit him hard. He attempted to focus on those instead of the irregularity he had heard in Stephen's voice. It was something that Spencer had searched for before in his voice… that _fervor_. That _hunger_. It wasn't bloodlust, but it was certainly something close to it.

Putting it off as a trick of his ears, that the shafts would distort Stephen's tone, Spencer was quite relieved when his mind backed up that notion with scientific statistics and proof of earlier studies. He was just hearing things, that's all. And that certainly wasn't new to Spencer, anyway.

 _There._ One more person. After this, there was going to be only one person left to kill, and Stephen and Spencer could proceed to the finals. Spencer knocked once, loud and clear, and bristled softly as the woman below got closer and closer to the door -

And stopped. She stopped right before the door's threshold, and slowly tilted her head upwards. And looked straight into Spencer's eyes. They stayed like that for many moments, until Stephen's voice called out, "Spencer? Is anyone coming?"

And instantly, the woman exploded into action. She bent down below the peephole and gauged the distance, then proceeded to shove her foot through the door.

The room that Spencer and Stephen had chosen - well, really Spencer, but that didn't matter now - was not a heavily fortified room. It was originally a storage closet, until it had been turned into a classroom, and was then just abandoned for no apparent reason, excluding Jason's occasional seminars (which he was actually supposed to have in another classroom).

Therefore, it wasn't much of a surprise when the woman's foot broke straight through the door; the wood was thin and wasn't made to keep things out or in. What Spencer wasn't expecting was the scream that had undoubtedly come from Stephen - along with a subsequent telltale squeak that Spencer had heard - and made - enough times to know what it was indicative of. Wincing and instinctively crossing his legs in sympathetic pain, Spencer pondered his options, adrenaline pumping through his veins. He did not, however, panic. He's always known that he thinks better and does better in whatever he's doing whenever he's under stress.

And right now, it was quite clear to his stressed out mind that he had the element of surprise on his side. And he was prepared to use it. Taking the gun from the back of his pants and flicking the safety off, he held it by his side as he began his trek back through the shafts to the room.

It was a gruelingly tedious trek, but every moment filled with Spencer's breath and blink and heartbeat made it tense and terrifying. Each moment passed with external silence and Spencer thought the worst.

However, he was stopped midway on his way back by Stephen. He had apparently crawled up into the shaft without Spencer hearing. His gun was clasped firmly between his fingers.

"Ah, damn," the other man cursed in a rather annoyed manner. "I had rather hoped you wouldn't notice me. This could have gone a lot faster and a lot easier."

"Stephen?" Spencer faintly called, a sudden pressure in his arm making him want to lift his gun, _now._ He resisted the admittedly eager urge. "Stephen, what's going on? Are you okay?"

The gun came up on its own accord, just as Stephen's gun raised as well, pointing directly at Spencer's forehead. Spencer took a deep breath, and said, "Stephen… listen to me. You don't want to do this."

He really probably didn't want to do it. If he fired a shot inside of the vent, there was more than a 70% possibility that it would ricochet and hit him back, as well as Spencer. But Spencer was pretty sure he knew that. Pretty sure.

"Why?" he sneered, and Spencer cursed himself. And again. Over and over, _damnit,_ did he never _learn?_ "Look, Spencer, I think you're a great guy, and I'm sorry it turned out this way, but man… I can't take the chance that the rumours are true.

"Word has it that it's that the Boston Butcher who's the last person left. And I think we both know that we'd rather off each other than deal with that, right?" Stephen wavered, and Spencer took in the scene with his mouth agape, some voice in the back of his mind laughing hysterically at the irony.

"I… what?" Spencer shook his head. His voice echoed oddly, sounding like it was being pressed through a tube, his body felt as if it were millions of miles away. He felt disconnected. "I don't understand."

" _Please_ don't make me give some stupid, cliche villain monologue or some shit. Just do me a favor and shut your eyes, okay? I promise I'll make it quick."

"I… I didn't - didn't know," Spencer choked out, shaking his head slowly, the movement growing in vehemence with each passing moment and revelation crawled into his brain. One point seemed to stick out above the rest, however. "You're not Gideon's son," he blurted out, and that seemed to bother him more than anything else. "You manipulated me into trusting you, helping you, by posing as Gideon's son? You're not even half the man I thought you were."

"Don't worry," the gun's wavering suddenly stilled, and Stephen curled his sure fingers around the grip and around the trigger, aiming with half of a smirk planted on his face. "I'm not aiming to be a good man."

 _Bang!_

The shot reverberated through the vents with painfully sharp precision, as the pain of the original sound bounced back again and again, leaving Spencer with an intense headache afterwards. Once he had realized that he wasn't dead, Spencer looked up and saw Stephen's hollow corpse staring straight back at him from the floor of the vent. He was sinking in a pool of his own blood, and behind him sat a rather familiar figure.

"D-Derek?" Spencer stammered instinctually at the sight of the man.

"Pretty Boy?" Derek responded, almost immediately. "Hey, I _thought_ I saw you earlier."

There was a lengthy pause, filled only by the faint echo of Spencer's panting and Derek's uncomfortable shuffling. Derek glanced around, then spoke again.

"I'm pretty sure they have camera's in the air vents. They'll know we've… finished. Let's get you out of here."

Spencer sighed and closed his eyes for one more moment before giving a soft nod and stepping over the body of the man he had thought a friend for a short time. His gaze lingered for only a moment, unguarded and filled with emotional turmoil - up until his eyes hardened and his regret steeled to resentment.

 _Never again._

 _ **Never**_ _._

* * *

The rest of the time after that was a bit of a blur for Spencer, who had let his mind roam as Derek had led him to wherever they had needed to go. Somewhere along the way, they had met up with the other four Contenders from the other Sectors, but Spencer didn't pay them any mind. He was a bit too concerned with keeping himself relatively stable, for the moment.

Eventually, Spencer reluctantly pulled himself back to reality and gazed at his surroundings. They were in a room that looked a lot like the _official_ ones that _official_ people would have _official_ meetings in. Momentarily questioning his suddenly childish view on things, Spencer shook his head to clear the cobwebs as he drank in everything that was going on.

The meeting table, curved in a horseshoe shape around the corners of the room with the open ended portion facing towards the door they had entered through, was occupied by six people. Spencer had been shown enough pictures and case files to know them all by name.

The two persons at the edges of the table - one male, one female - were two personal assistants of Erin Strauss: Joshua Retclinn and Cynthia Feldman. At least, they were the current ones. Rumour had it that Erin would discard of her assistants from time to time over simple things - not because those trivial things had made her upset, but rather because she was bored, and wanted a change of venue.

Starting from the leftmost side, there sat a woman with rather artificially straight blonde hair that dangled in perfect lines down to her shoulders; she had a notepad in front of her, and was scribbling on it furiously. Spencer thought he could almost catch sight of a doodle or two on the paper, but he paid it no mind. Jennifer Jareau, serving her third year on the team, was an exceptional manipulator and somewhat of a buffer for the organization; she worked undercover as a reporter, and was therefore in control of the media's thoughts and biases. If the organization needed attention to be brought on a criminal, she could do it in a heartbeat. If the organization needed to take care of someone quickly and efficiently, she would be brought in to 'inform' the media of any 'clues' that the police may be able to come up with.

To her immediate left sat Erin Strauss herself, the boss of Impunity, Sagacity, Subversion - if James Moriarty held it under his control, she was the boss of it. To her immediate left sat Jason, looking placidly around the room, and quite bored, to be honest. He showed no interest in any of the pairs of Sectors One or Two, but when Spencer walked in with Derek, his jaw began working, and he leaned back in his chair. Obvious frustration. Fear. Worry. The emotions crossed his face for a split second before the bored visage reigned his expression once more.

And to the left of him sat the only person left: the man's determined and weary default expression was one hard to not recognize from afar. Aaron Hotchner, serving his eleventh year on the team, bested in years only by Jason, who was serving his twenty-seventh year. The man held a perfect military belligerence and determination; he was most known by his strict ways and no-nonsense attitude. But not only that; he was also one of the first team members onto the team who had had his stressor make the news. "District Attorney Lawyer Aaron Hotchner's wife and child murdered in-house." Spencer still remembered every word he had read on the news website, and recited most of them in his head now. For some odd reason, Spencer had always been intrigued by the man, but far too afraid to make any means to contact him; his reputation preceded him very much with a very strong intensity. Aside from Jason, Aaron Hotchner was the team member you _really_ did not want to piss off.

Of course, now was the third Trial. The finals. Only one person was coming out of this alive. And that… that meant that either he or Derek was going to die. Spencer swallowed, looking over at the man. He had never gotten a clear look at him, up close and personal; he had only remembered vague features from the Boston Incident, and had seen several pictures of him on the newspapers of the Boston Incident.

He was roughly the same height as Spencer, though his lack of a full head of hair must have put him a mere half-an-inch below the genius, with good looks and then some. It almost seemed like his entire figure was sculpted by the best artists, muscles toned to just the right degree, clothes that were obviously made to be formal but by the way they accentuated the lines on the man's form it appeared almost casual, and his face being the masterpiece of all. Eyes wide with the supposed innocence of a child having just a glimpse of the world, yet darkened with the weight of a thousand worlds, mouth puckered into a thin line with just a flash of blinding white teeth showing when he gave a small smile, eyebrows dancing in time with his emotions, perking upward for a split moment before retiring back into their low, sinking position when the smile faded.

Looking around at the other people he was supposedly 'competing' against, Spencer felt the first wave of anxiety strike him. Several were of greater statures than him, not to mention the confidence etched in their stances.

Of the four other people in the room, three were women, two of which had broad shoulders and looked almost identical. Spencer grimaced slightly, wondered if they were siblings and what it would be like if only one of them made it out alive. The third woman was smaller, more lithe, and would have looked almost beautifully delicate, if not for the prominent freckles of blood peppered across her face. She didn't seem all too bothered by this, and it did seem to add an impressive factor of prestige to her overall disposition.

The other man in the group looked to be Spencer's most challenging competitor, as he was being interrogated at that singular moment, and seemed to be doing quite well for himself. He was incredibly apt at physical tasks, that was visible even from across the room, and the judges were looking quite impressed with him on the intelligence portion as well. Perhaps… perhaps he rivaled Spencer's intelligence and had more physical prowess…? Spencer would be doomed.

Well. He _would_ have been doomed; it hadn't been a singular instant longer that there was a heavy sigh from Erin supplemented by a shuffle of movement and a loud bang. The man fell to the floor, dead, and as Erin beckoned for the next person on the list - one Rebecca Sneed - the upcoming Contender didn't take the courtesy of stepping over the corpse; instead, its chest gave a rather loud crunch beneath her foot as she passed. It was the girl with the blood all over her face.

She didn't get far into her interrogation before she was apparently deemed unworthy; it wasn't Erin Strauss that called her out this time, however. Aaron Hotchner glanced around at the disgust on his teammates faces, and, feeling the same, he beckoned to two men at the back. Spencer whipped around; he hadn't noticed them when he first walked in. They moved forward, and took the girl by both arms, beginning to drag her away. The middle of her sentence was broken with an abrupt scream as she writhed and attempted to get away. Spencer winced, knowing he would do the same in her position.

However, just before the party had gotten halfway across the room, the girl gave a tremulous roar and ripped herself from the two men, making a break for the door. Before she could get there, however, she stopped rather efficiently by a hand on her neck, swinging her around and pinning her to the wall. She scrabbled and kicked and flailed, but Derek's grip on her throat remained firm. After a few more moments, she at last slowed her flailing and came to an unnatural stillness. Derek dropped her unceremoniously onto the floor, and walked back to his place beside Spencer, meeting the pressing stares he received with stoic indifference. Spencer physically felt his respect for the man rise.

"Thank you, Mr. Morgan," Erin intoned with a dip of her head; Derek politely returned it. "Now … Spencer Reid."

His relief and awe from before suddenly turned to ice in his veins, and he stiffened, eyes wide and fearful. The adrenaline he had had rushing through his veins during the Test had worn off by now, and he was left all by himself, stepping up to the execution block with a gaping mouth and terrified trembling hands. Steeling himself, he reminded himself of why he was here. Straightening his back and drawing himself up to his full height, he forced his hands to flex then form firm fists. He was determined to show his strength - this was the real Test that he needed to pass.

Unfortunately, he didn't manage to get even one word in before Erin interrupted him with a raised hand; Spencer swallowed. She looked furious.

She was currently staring Jason down with a fierce glare; Jason himself held her gaze with a blank expression. Spencer noted how he seemed closer to the table, his hands folded together and resting in front of him; he must have moved closer to inspect Spencer and possibly send him some tips. Erin must have noticed.

 _Not good._

She cleared her throat, and said in a deathly quiet voice, "Jason. Must I remind you of the last time you took on a pupil?"

Jason didn't blink, but simply held her gaze; after a few uncomfortable moments, she turned back to Spencer with a sigh. Then, seeming to get an idea, she shot, "Fifteen times forty-two."

"Six-hundred and thirty," Spencer blurted without preamble, and looking more than bemused at the words that had escaped his mouth. Erin didn't seem to be surprised, nor finished.

"Eight-hundred Seventy-three divided by three."

"Two hundred ninety-one."

"Four thousand, nine hundred thirty seven times eight hundred fifty two."

Spencer took a moment to think. "Four million, two hundred six thousand three hundred twenty-four."

Erin peered at him suspiciously. "Green is neither first nor last; Blue is two before Black, which is three after Green. Yellow is second to last and Red is either first or last."

Spencer gave her a questioning look as the cogs turned in his mind. Why was she giving him mind games most people saw on the back of a cereal box? "Red, Green, Blue, Yellow, Black."

"What was your stressor?"

There followed a tense silence in which everyone turned their gazes to the ground or at their hands. Jennifer cleared her throat as if to draw attention, and Aaron muttered softly under his breath, as if he were regretting what he was doing, but out of all of them, it was Jason that addressed her directly.

"He is not required to answer that."

"He is if he believes that he can join this team. Not only can't you have secrets among our ranks, but you must also not have any taboo subjects. If he can tell us what his stressor was, he'll be fit to join the team. Dr. Reid?" She turned to him.

"Taboo subjects are an occupational hazard, ma'am. He is entitled to his own - "

"I seem to be mistaken, Agent Jareau. I was operating under the assumption that I was addressing Dr. Reid."

"Then I must apologize as well, for I was operating under the assumption that we valued the respect and rights of our clients - "

"It's fine," Spencer interjected, before Agent Hotchner could go any further and dig himself into a ditch he wouldn't be able to climb out of. "I didn't - I mean, of course I wasn't always like this. Insane.

"I used to consult for the FBI. You won't find any files or electronic information on it; it was all kept secret. In order to be put on the team, you had to complete six months of a desk job, but they all felt I would do much better work with the team. They couldn't make it official, so it was all kept as top secret. It wasn't until a few months after being their consultant that they let me out into the field. Unarmed and completely protected by citizen's rights, but still active on the job. We were up against an unsub - Tobias Hankel - who had split personalities, living as his father, himself, and an archangel, Raphael.

"I, uh, I made a stupid mistake and got myself kidnapped. I was… _held_ , for three days. From paddling to drug abuse to Russian Roulette. I experienced hell for three days straight; by the time the FBI team had found me, I was a dithering mess. My - uh - my mother was a paranoid schizophrenic, the hereditary gene passing down in me as well. I just had my psychotic break a bit earlier than she did.

"I'm not sane, that's obvious. But despite it, I've managed to keep myself alive. I'm not a risk, and I won't endanger anyone except perhaps myself. There's a fine line between insanity and genius, ma'am. And what I'm offering you now, by being here, is the chance to be in control of the one person that keeps a foot on each side."

Erin leaned back in her chair. "That's quite the case you present, Dr. Reid. Unfortunately, the results of this trial have already been decided. We had spoken to Mr. Morgan roughly a month ago, and are now formally accepting him as a team member. I apologize if you had been roped into this by an unseeming man. Your rejection had been engineered at the moment you sent in the papers." She shot daggers to Jason, who looked rather like he was thinking of taking Erin's gun and putting its barrel against the woman's neck.

Spencer swallowed, glancing over at Derek, who looked just as shocked as Spencer felt. The arsonist began to shake his head, stumbling over his own words. "No direct offense meant, ma'am, but surely Dr. Reid could be of _some_ use to you?"

Erin exchanged her glare with his stare of disbelief as she said unfeelingly, "No. I will not allow another applicant to have special advantages because Jason Gideon _knows_ him. He may have gotten away with it in the past; not anymore."

"All due respect," Derek offered mildly, in the way one who knew what they were saying was completely bullshit would speak. The tone was dropped once he continued, hardening into a steely firmness. "The sole, actual portion of my resume that was impressive enough to warrant a private meeting was that I had been involved in an incident with Gideon. He's the reason you're 'accepting' me, and that would make it immensely hypocritical to turn around and say that this much more qualified, insane genius of a man did not get here with one ounce of his own work."

Erin glared at him, though he did not back down, and sucked on her bottom lip. "I have made a decision, and that is final," she finally said. "Dr. Reid will be kept in the sanatorium downstairs, where he can give no grief to this team. That being said, I want none of this team giving grief to him by visiting him. Am I understood?"

There was a casual murmur of assent in the room that Erin seemed compliant enough to work with. She nodded, then stood and offered a hand to Derek. He eyed her warily, then accepted her handshake. "Welcome to the Syndicate. Officially."

Derek nodded, but did not say anything. Once Erin let go, he sent a sidelong glance to Spencer who, for his part, didn't look altogether concerned. More disappointed. Derek watched in sorrow as the man was lead away by two officials, who attempted to lead him by force. A spark of satisfaction flared through Derek when he caught Spencer's sharp, "I already know the way. And I'd appreciate a bit of respect of my personal space, thank you."

Shaking his head of thoughts of the younger man, Derek turned to the rest of the team. His team. His new family.

He smiled.

* * *

 **A/N: Well, that's all for now, guys. I hope you enjoyed, feel free to leave comments, suggestions, etc. in the review box, and hopefully I'll post something again soon. Thanks for reading, y'all! Peace out!**

 **~IsomorphicTARDIS**


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